Colleague told me to keep quiet, Garda tells court

A garda has said a colleague accused of assaulting a young man after forcing entry to his flat had told her not to say anything if she was asked about the alleged incident.

Garda Caroline Breslin, then a student garda, said she was in a patrol car with Gda Alan Conlon a few days after the alleged assault when he told her if anyone asked her about the incident, she wasn’t to say anything.

Gda Breslin told Mr Patrick McGrath BL, prosecuting, that she had waited outside the flat with another garda but could hear a woman screaming from inside.

Gardaí Conlon, Eoin Murtagh, Claire Delaney and Sean O’Leary have pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to forcing entry at a Basin Street Upper premises, entering as a trespasser and assaulting Mr Owen Gaffney (aged 21) causing him harm on February 17, 2008.

Gdi Murtagh, Conlon and Delaney have also pleaded not guilty to the false imprisonment of Ms Fidelma Gaffney on the same occasion.

Gda Breslin told Mr McGrath (with Mr Tom O’Connell SC) that she had been in a patrol car driven by Gda Conlon on February 17, 2008 when he said something about a male who had threatened to bite his nose off.

She said Gda Conlon mentioned that Gda Murtagh had received scrapes on his face from another incident with this same person.

She told Mr McGrath that her car drove around the Basin Street area a few times for what she assumed was to see if they could find this male.

She said Gda Conlon had been on the car radio to meet up with the Kilmainham patrol vehicle occupied by the other three accused and then Student Garda Catherine Patterson.

Gda Breslin said she recalled Gda Conlon getting out of their Kevin Street car to speak with the Kilmainham car occupants before these two vehicles and another patrol car drove to the Basin Street flats.

She said somebody knocked at a flat door once everyone had climbed a number of stairs and that a female answered but she could not hear what was said.

She said the other gardaí, bar herself and a male garda, went upstairs in the flat and the female followed.

She said she heard screaming from presumably the same woman, who sounded hysterical.

She added that a man, who seemed a “bit out of it, or drunk” came to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up something like: “Stop that, what you’re at there.”

She told Mr McGrath that she and the other male garda waiting outside decided to go back to mind the patrol vehicles when they noticed a number of children in the play area nearby shouting abuse and threatening to damage the cars.

She said all other gardaí returned downstairs a few minutes later and the cars left the area, but she saw Gdi O’Leary, Delaney and Murtagh at Kevin Street garda station later that day.

Gda Breslin accepted when Mr David Keane SC, defending Gda Conlon, highlighted that in her original statement to the Garda Ombudsman Commission she said she had been distracted by “children and youths” while outside the flat.

She agreed these could have been youths playing five-a-side football in the nearby pitch.

She further accepted she had said in her statement that Gda Conlon told her if anyone asked her what happened “you didn’t see anything.”

She agreed that she hadn’t seen anything from her position with the other male garda outside the door.

The trial continues before Judge Desmond Hogan and a jury of six men and six women.