Garda boss flags rise in online crime as concern in new strategy

Commissioner and Policing Authority publish strategy and policing plans

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris: Keeping people safe and protecting those at risk and victims of crime is the organisation’s central mission. Picture: Conor Ó Mearáin 

The rise in online crime and crimes against vulnerable people will feature prominently in the coming years, the Garda Commissioner has said.

Drew Harris said keeping people safe and protecting those at risk and victims of crime is the organisation’s central mission.

Launching An Garda Siochana’s Strategy Statement 2022-2024, the ommissioner said the organisation was going through its biggest transformation in its history with the expected completion of major reforms by the middle of next year.

He said the strategy statement was the result of an extensive consultation process, where they engaged with diverse communities, government departments and agencies, civil society and garda personnel of every rank, as well as police forces abroad.

He said this was incorporated into the statement.

“Today, change is both rapid and constant,” Commissioner Harris said. “The rise in online crime and crimes against the vulnerable will feature prominently in the years ahead.” 

He said: “Keeping people safe and protecting the vulnerable and victims of crime remains our central mission.” 

He said the work of gardaí brings them into contact with people who have “experienced injury, trauma and people who are suspected of wrongdoing” and that it was incumbent on police to protect their dignity and human rights.

He said that the strategy will “bridge one of the most encompassing and transformative changes” in the history of the force, which celebrates its centenary this year.

He said the Government’s A Policing Service For Our Future, which seeks to implement the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland report, published in September 2018, will be completed half way through the strategy.

The strategy earmarks as a priority assisting those at “higher risk of violence or crime” and ensuring a “consistent response” from gardaí to vulnerable people interacting with them.

In the first of three annual policing plans to implement the strategy, the commissioner also published the Policing Plan 2022.

The rollout of the Community Policing Framework will continue during this year and the organisation, with a focus on increasing awareness around hate crime and how to report it.

Efforts to combat the harm caused to communities by drug dealing will continue, in addition to national efforts to combat trafficking.

The plan said gardaí will address recent increases in fraud and cyber-enabled crimes.

Coinciding with the Garda reports, the Policing Authority released its Policing Priorities 2022-24, which, it said, outlined what “the authority wants the Garda Síochána to give the most attention to” over the period.

Top of the list is protecting victims and the vulnerable, including in areas of sexual crime, domestic crime that is centered on the victim and informed by trauma suffered.

On community safety, it calls on gardaí to "understand and respond to" anti-social behaviour and crime, and the associated quality of life for communities.