Gardaí fear courts may hamper their effectiveness

GARDAÍ are increasingly concerned about the criminalisation of officers prosecuted for actions carried out in the course of their duties.

The general secretary of the Garda Representative Association (GRA) PJ Stone said most officers prosecuted had their cases dismissed.

“We’re becoming increasingly concerned about the criminalisation of gardaí doing their duty.”

Cases resulting from the May Day clashes of 2002 highlighted this, he said.

He said that of the seven gardaí prosecuted only one was convicted, and that was for a minor offence.

“With the exception of one minor conviction thankfully they had their cases dismissed. One had to defend himself twice.”

He said he was not looking for gardaí to be exempt from prosecution.

“We don’t expect members who deliberately break the law to be treated any differently than any other citizen, but we have to reach a balance here where members doing their duty are not persecuted and prosecuted as is the case.”

Mr Stone said officers were under constant pressure. “Members, at the end of their duty, can face a dilemma, one a criminal charge, one a civil charge. Something has to be done to alleviate that type of stress and pressure.

“That’s not to say that members of the force can break the law with impunity, but you cannot criminalise members of the force when they are doing the duty when they make a mistake or error of judgement.”

The conference also heard calls for more gardaí to be trained to use the ‘intoxiliser’ breathalysing machines.

GRA Donegal representative Michael O’Boyce said that the lack of trained officers was resulting “in an overload of work” on the few gardaí trained in the area.

“It is common that perhaps only one garda per station is trained in the use of these devices, therefore his/her workload increases unfairly,” he said.

“These members also spend a lot of time dealing with court proceedings arising out of intoxiliser results as these results are frequently challenged by defence legal teams.”

Gardaí also called for more support from senior management in dealing with serious public order issues.

GRA Cork West delegate Patrick O’Sullivan said rural stations were poorly resourced to deal with such problems.

“Rural towns experience their fair share of public order disturbances and due to low manning levels, it often falls on young or relatively inexperienced gardaí to deal with them.”

He said the local superintendent should be on call to assist rank and file gardaí to deal with such disturbances.