‘Talking to drug dealers may help end intimidation’

COMMUNITY leaders should consider talking to drug dealers who are terrorising residents of a Dublin flats complex, a local drug worker has suggested.

Graham Ryall, treatment services co-ordinator at the Rialto Community Drugs Team, said the talks would be aimed at ending the intimidation of residents at Dolphin House flats, in the south inner city.

His radical suggestion comes as the Criminal Assets Bureau has set up an investigation to profile assets linked to gang members.

The gang started intimidating residents after gardaí set up a high-profile, and successful, operation in the complex.

“We should consider sitting down with those who are actually involved in the dealing,” said Mr Ryall.

“We have to discuss the possibility of sitting down with drug dealers who are basically making the lives of residents of Dolphin House hell. That is the reality.

“We’d say: ‘Right, you are going to deal, it’s going to happen, but an end to the intimidation and the harassment of people. Let people go about their business, their own personal lives. Let their kids go out and play. Let them do it safely’.”

The harassment by gang members began last month after gardaí brought in a heavy police presence into the estate, seriously disrupting dealing and seizing a substantial amount of drugs.

Dublin City Council erected two walls, at considerable cost (estimated to be about €28,000), to cut off escape routes between individual blocks in Block 2 in the sprawling complex.

The gang retaliated by scratching 29 cars belonging to residents, slashing tyres and daubing some of them with paint. Graffiti was sprayed naming individual gardaí and telling gardaí to get out.

A community meeting held afterwards was interrupted after a suspicious device was planted outside the hall by the gang.

Mr Ryall said residents at the complex were not able to take the intimidation. “I know of mothers who are on anti-depressants, sleeping tablets, such is the effect what’s going on there is having on them, their kids not being allowed out to play.”

He said vulnerable residents had also been intimidated into holding drugs.

“There has always been drug dealing here, but the intimidation and the fear thing is what the residents can’t handle.”

Mr Ryall pointed out that people involved in the regeneration project in Limerick had spoken to the feuding families there.

He said communication would be crucial to win over residents: “We’d all love if drug dealing is gone from the complex, but it’s probably not going to happen. But if people were allowed to get their lives back ... their kids allowed out to play safely, I would think they’d be open. It’s an option that should be explored.” He said such a project had been set up in Bristol, based on a similar initiative in Baltimore.