Confronting crime - Our society is worth protecting

LET’S start with the spur-of-the-moment murders of Polish men Pawel Kalite — who was buried yesterday — and his friend Marius Szwajkos on February 23.

They were put to death by a gang of teenagers, one of whom, it is believed, used a screwdriver to inflict the fatal injuries.

Though a month has not yet fully passed since that atrocity we have seen a convicted killer murdered in Limerick, possibly beaten to death by an attacker using a hammer.

We have had a series of schoolboy suicides and a savage school-yard attack on a young girl by her classmates. The attackers gagged and tried to strip the young girl as a school mate filmed the episode on his phone. Nobody intervened to rescue the girl.

Just yesterday we had the news that an off-duty taxi driver was stabbed to death after some sort of row with people he had given a lift to. We had a man arrested in possession of grenades and an automatic pistol, just driving along the road. We had a 15-year-old in court charged with carrying a powerful handgun.

We heard the president of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors calling for the televising of serious court cases. It was “high time” the public became aware of the “carry-on” during serious criminal trials, said AGSI president Paschal Feeney.

As well as all of that we heard how a tourist had a finger torn off during an assault off Dublin’s O’Connell Street. And then there was St Patrick’s Day on “Battlefield Drive” in Finglas.

Though not unique the mayhem, casual violence, car burning, vandalism, assaults, car jacking, car theft, are another indication of the levels of violence we have come to accept as everyday. These events represent an indifference, a two fingers, to any sort of social responsibility or cohesion we imagine our society deserves and needs to sustain itself.

In Finglas, “there were parents, drunk, looking at their kids burning out cars. Just standing and looking”, said a witness. A number of cars and vans — presumably stolen — had been raced through the small estate before being crashed and set alight, with the fire brigade unable to respond because of safety fears.

Cars using a nearby road were targeted. One man was stopped and dragged from his car, which was burnt by rampaging teenagers. Remember, this was done in Dublin, in broad daylight, by gangs “celebrating” St Patrick’s Day. In a dreadful indictment of our commitment to protecting our citizens some people had to flee their homes at lunchtime on St Patrick’s Day. They were aware that a group of local adolescents had been drinking since morning and knew what they were capable of.

If citizens of this state had to leave their homes because of religious persecution we’d call it a pogrom and be outraged. Yet when people raising a family and paying a mortgage have to do a runner, like a persecuted minority in a war zone, because their neighbours’ children are tanked up on booze and drugs we talk about “facilities,” “inclusion,” “parity of esteem,” “educational opportunities,” and “appropriate therapies”.

We all have a responsibility in this; the state to offer protection to all of its citizens all of the time; to each of us to try to raise our children in such a way that they might become an asset to society — and to themselves — rather than a threat to it.

Our social and political leaders must quickly and firmly show leadership informed by courage and fairness. They must confront these events, these people, with a response that shows they are prepared to protect each and every citizen and each and every community in this country. After all, if they are not prepared to show that our society is worth protecting, who will?