Gardaí preparing for escalation of gangland feud

GARDAÍ are preparing for an escalation in violence linked to gangland feuds in the Crumlin-Drimnagh area of south Dublin.

The main feud has already directly claimed around 13 lives in the last nine years and now a so-called “second generation” of gang members is ratcheting up the violence.

The jailing last month of Brian Rattigan, the leader of one of the gangs, has resulted in increased tension, both on the streets and in the prisons, where his gang and the rival gang have clashed violently.

In the most recent incident, army bomb disposal experts disarmed a “viable” explosive device which had been left at the door of a house on Sperrin Road in Drimnagh. This house has previously been shot at, including an attack last February, in which the front window was shot in five times with a pump action shot gun.

Garda sources said a young man in the house opened the front door just after 11pm and saw a device hanging off the door. He threw it across the road to a nearby church car park. Army bomb disposal experts disarmed the device and the area was made safe after 2am. Gardaí said the device had a fuse and gun powder and was filled with nails.

Detectives are investigating if it is linked with a violent assault at the local pub last Sunday. In that incident, a young relative of Rattigan was hit on the head with a hammer. Gardaí said three males had entered the Marble Arch pub and assaulted him. They included two brothers involved in the rival gang who were the subject of a failed gun attack last April. There were 10 shootings on houses between February and April last year, sparking patrols by specialist Garda units.

In another incident on Tuesday, members of the rival gang were involved in an incident in Mountjoy Prison, in which they threw the contents of chamber pots onto prison officers. Prison sources say this gang had “started to dominate” in Mountjoy after a large number of members aligned to the Rattigan gang were transferred to Limerick and the Midlands prisons following an outbreak of serious violence on December 27 at the jail. In this incident, captured on CCTV, an inmate was stabbed five times by a violent criminal from Crumlin.