The men and women who are the ‘eyes and ears’ of Cork City
The control room at Anglesea St garda station is the hub of emergency calls in Cork City, offering 24-hour surveillance.
The ‘control centre’ comprises two rooms: the main one monitors the 36 screens fed from cameras across the city, manned by two gardaí who deal with emergency calls. The second room has ten screens, also manned constantly.
The main control room is operated by the same core staff, working ten-hour shifts. As the calls come in, the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system uses GPS to locate the nearest unit to the incident. Sgt John O’Donovan says bogus calls can be an issue, and persistent offenders have been prosecuted.
“People get very excited when they call 999, and they can be difficult to understand,” says Sgt O’Donovan. “People making calls should keep the message brief, be as descriptive as possible with their location and don’t assume the gardaí will know the area they are taking about,” he says.
Supt McPolin says CCTV has been a huge addition in tackling crime. “The surveillance system makes it increasingly easy to provide evidence in court and it is a highly reputable source. It is also very helpful in apprehending suspects.
“Sometimes, you see people doing things on the cameras and they suddenly realise they are being observed and run away. You can then see them as they run into the proximity of another camera. This way, you can track them and direct a nearby unit to intercept them.”
The quarterly CSO statistics highlight trends in the south of Ireland, in Limerick, Kerry, Tipperary, Clare, Waterford and Cork. Compared to last year, robbery, extortion and hijacking are up by 43 cases, to 263.
Organised crime, and related offences, jumped 275 cases, with 1,159 convictions last year, and 1,434 in 2013 — so far. Other crimes have dropped off. There were 415 fewer controlled drug offences this year — 2,750 compared with 3,165 last year.
Burglary and related offences are down 567. There were 2,903 convictions, compared to 3,407 in 2012.
The most common crimes — public order offences, including disorderly conduct and prostitution — were down by 869, from 10,849 to 9,443 this year.
Drugs offences take up much garda time. “Heroin is a bit of a problem for us alright,” Sgt Davis says. “It first reared its head around the mid-noughties.”
“It is a problem,” Supt Mc Polin agrees. “But we work closely with the Cork City Drugs Task Force, the HSE, City Hall, treatment centres and community groups, to tackle it.” Supt McPolin says speed and organisation are key to tackling the problem. “We can respond rapidly. We have a specific heroin unit, and it is supplemented by the drugs units in the four districts of the city — Togher, Mayfield, Anglesea and Gurranabraher.
“We target the dealers and the people behind them. We have a Top 20 hit list for the city and we watch activity.”
“We also have a forensic analysis team, who produce daily and weekly reports of the crime trends in Cork, so we always know what we are looking for. If there is a particular area giving trouble, we will redistribute our resources to deal with it.”
Every morning, the district management team gathers in Supt McPolin’s office and goes through the crimes reported the night before.
“We watch everything,” Sgt Davis says. “If something happens, we want to know why it happened. If someone is released from jail, we monitor that, too.
“Cork is not really very big,” Supt McPolin says. “Everyone knows everyone.”
In the past year, bike theft has been a problem, along with the theft of iPhones and other technology items, usually taken from pubs and clubs.
The gardaí have 70 recovered bikes that will be auctioned in Dublin on Nov 7, as they have reamain unclaimed. “People are not reporting bike theft and, as a result, it is getting worse,” Sgt Davis says. “For example, in the last ten days we have had 15 bikes reported stolen. The total value of the bikes was €5,800. And they are just the ones that have been reported.”
* All the bikes in police custody have been professionally photographed and put on the Cork City garda crime-prevention page on Facebook.
The gardaí also have a national Flickr page (‘An Garda Síochána’) that catalogues items recovered, and the Twitter page @gardatraffic has over 37,000 followers.
The Garda Youtube page is Gardapressoffice — a very useful resource, with videos of information on fraud scams and with useful tips for the public to help prevent crime.
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