Pissing into the Wind: The Irish Gardaí and Kildare

The Irish Criminal Justice System is harder on Cops than it is on Crooks.

The most ludicrous thing in a litany of ludicrous things about the car crash which claimed five lives over the weekend is, by some distance, the ongoing “Fiosrú” investigation into the actions of the Gardaí.

This investigation, to be clear, is mandatory. It is mandatory because the Gardaí had contact with the car driven by the five now-deceased balaclava-wearing thugs who first stole the car that would become their coffins, and then drove it the wrong way down the motorway, head-on into a car containing three innocent adults and one innocent child.

As the Irish Times tells us:

The Irish Times understands the black BMW was driven down the M9 in the wrong direction, speeding into oncoming traffic, in two stints in the early hours of Sunday. Gardaí in a patrol car had earlier requested the vehicle to stop at about 2am in Athy, but the driver sped off.

…. Gardaí believe the BMW was driven on to the wrong side of the M9 because the driver was trying to evade gardaí and likely knew Garda patrol cars in the area would not be allowed to pursue them driving against traffic. It is understood gardaí were not pursuing the BMW at the time of the crash.

We can be sure of a couple of things: First, the Fiosrú investigation will correctly find no wrongdoing on behalf of the Gardaí, who were not near the car when it crashed and had no involvement in the accident.

Second, this certainly would not be the case had Gardaí aggressively pursued the car and attempted to stop it, but the accident had occurred anyway.

We know this because it has happened before, in recent memory. In 2021, three Dublin career criminals, Dean Maguire, 29, Karl Freeman, 26, and Graham Taylor, 31, were evading the Gardaí when they chose to flee down the M7 in the wrong direction. They were followed, in pursuit, by Garda John Francis Ryan. The three crooks crashed their car head-on into a truck and departed to the great criminal rehabilitation centre in the sky.

Garda Ryan, meanwhile, was charged after a Fiosrú investigation and sent forward for trial on charges of dangerous driving and endangerment of life. As far as I know, that case has yet to be resolved.

On this occasion, thankfully, the cops did exactly what the book now says they should: left the crooks to it. At least on this occasion, when the public were severely endangered, no Garda can be prosecuted.

Consider the incentives this creates: If you are a Garda and you try to intervene, you risk criminal sanction. If, by contrast, you stay back and do nothing, your career, reputation and bank balance are protected.

That this should happen mere days after Alison Chawke was released from prison after serving just a few weeks of a two-year sentence for trying to bite a man’s face off is especially illuminating, if not darkly hilarious. Who would be a Garda? It’s like getting paid to piss into the wind, over and over and over again.

If you want to understand how Ireland works these days, just consider what would have happened to the five now-dead scrotes in that car had their lives been saved by police intervention, arrest and charge. How long, do you think, would they have spent in prison? Well, in 2023, a fifteen-year-old arrested and charged after an incident where the car he had stolen repeatedly rammed a Garda car got… eleven months’ detention. He was, no doubt, out in six.

What’s the penalty, by contrast, for a Garda charged with “endangering life” by trying to protect it? We don’t know, but we can reasonably surmise that, in addition to whatever prison sentence is handed down, the penalty will also include loss of your career, reputation and security.

This is the society we now live in: The criminal system is harder on Gardaí than it is on criminals. And the result? Hundreds of young scrotes stealing cars, joyriding around, putting it all on TikTok, safe in the knowledge that the cops cannot pursue them. It is a sick joke, and would be genuinely funny if three innocent women and a child were not fighting for their lives in hospital right now.

The Fiosrú investigation, for my money, sums up the whole rotten edifice. You or I, dear reader, could complete that investigation in two minutes: The cops did nothing wrong, because the cops did nothing, as per policy.

Yet the investigation must be concluded anyway. All the paperwork filled in. The reports written. The witnesses interviewed. The 30-page report on the incident filed. Busywork for a system that loves paperwork far more than it loves people.

Hundreds of thousands of euro will be spent. Best of all, nobody can comment because “an investigation is ongoing”. Thus Fiosrú, set up to improve Garda accountability, manages to prove the rule that all state organisations eventually serve the opposite purpose to the one they are designed for: Instead of improving accountability, Fiosrú becomes the latest version of “lessons will be learned”-ism and provides the perfect shield for NOT answering questions.

The problem in Ireland is very simple: The criminal justice system, from the top down, is on the side of criminals rather than the public. The rhetoric around crime proves it: When crime is discussed, it must ALWAYS be accompanied by platitudes about disadvantage and deprivation, the purpose of which is to remind us that the criminal is ultimately a victim of society’s cruelty. When prison is discussed, it must always be a “last resort” and about rehabilitating the basically misunderstood scrotes who end up inside it. No criminal justice policy is complete without reference to “community policing”, which is, of course, not policing at all but a misguided attempt to imagine that your local scrote will be turned into an upstanding chap if the nice community policewoman is friendly and calls him Anto instead of Anthony.

The best bit is: You voted for all of this, and none of it. It has both been open policy for years and yet never really debated. The people who decide crime policy in Ireland are not really the voters, who remain fixated on potholes and funerals and equaly-tea, but the good folks in the Irish Penal Reform Trust, who get paid to campaign to abolish prisons and blame society for criminals’ misunderstood activities.

There should be rage in Ireland over this state of affairs. Utter rage.

But there won’t be. Because there’s an investigation underway, and it is too early to draw any conclusions.

Spare me.

JMG