The killer instinct
The mayor of Limerick got it right. Reacting to the result in the Shane Geoghegan murder trial, Jim Long dismissed statements that Mr Geoghegan had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Shane was in the right place,” he said. “Going home to his beloved partner Jenna.”
Long’s assertion put in its proper context the murder of Shane Geoghegan on Nov 9, 2008. The Garryowen rugby player hadn’t strayed into the murky world of gangland. He had been going about his everyday life, informed by the values for which he would be posthumously lauded.
He didn’t know his killer. For him, as for the vast majority of citizens, the depraved incidents of gun killings were from a different world. Then, in a horrible twist of fate, gangland crawled out of its cesspit and took his life in an act which was equally brutal and stupid. Shane Geoghegan was murdered because his killer mistook him for a man who lived nearby.
For many, the murder of Shane Geoghegan, and that of Limerick businessman Roy Collins a few months later, represented a watershed in society’s attitude to gun crime. There was a vast outpouring of rage, tamped down only by grief in the wider Limerick community. High indignation emanated from politicians and the media. New laws were enacted to meet a threat to the way of life in a country that told itself it was being overrun by depraved criminals.
Whether or not it actually was a watershed is a moot point. Twelve years earlier, another murder precipitated an actual watershed, and since then every new outrage had prompted politicians in particular to attempt to replicate what transpired then.
Veronica Guerin was murdered on Jun 26, 1996. She had been targeted by the gang led by John Gilligan because her journalistic investigations threatened a major drugs operation. There had been gun murders over drugs and crime prior to that, but it was the first time that an ugly world had imposed itself beyond the natural parameters of its domain. Guerin’s murder came a few weeks after Detective Garda Jerry McCabe was shot dead by criminals in Adare, Co Limerick. Both events combined to awaken government and law enforcement agencies to the threat to the state. Resources were beefed up, but crucially, a law was enacted that has proved to be highly effective in fighting crime. The legislation to set up the Criminal Assets Bureau first saw life as a private member’s bill from opposition TD John O’Donoghue, but the Rainbow government took it on and ran with it.
CAB has proved to be a highly effective weapon. As of last year it has made orders on assets to the value of over €42m, and collected tax and interest amounting to €133m. Much of that money would otherwise have been invested in importing drugs, organising crime, and procuring guns. By any standards, the agency has been a major success.
The downside of the success is that there have been constant fruitless attempts to replicate it by reaching for legislation in the wake of every outrage. Through the years of the bubble economy, gun crime soared, as criminals fought for bulging markets in cocaine. Inevitably, there were feuds over patches, and with guns aplenty, the killing continued unabated.
The killings were consistently met with high dudgeon. Time and again new legislation was called for. There was no examination of why young men could be lured so easily to a station where killing was a matter of course. In a world of bling, where the individual was raised above any notion of the collective, it would have taken too much societal self-analysis to wonder why teenagers could transmogrify into depraved killers. Better to make new laws and not look closely at the problem.
It was out of such a culture that new laws were enacted in 2009, in the wake of the murders of Shane Geoghegan and Roy Collins. It was described as a watershed. This was going to properly tackle gun crime.
As reported in yesterday’s Irish Examiner, not one prosecution has been taken on foot of these new laws. Far from being a watershed, the Criminal Justice Act 2009 looks like being the political emperor with no clothes. Heaping laws upon laws has done precious little to tackle gun crime. Eroding basic freedoms in the name of the greater good is all very well, but when there are no results to show for it, questions must begin to be asked about the tactic.
However, where legislation has driven down a dead-end, the work of An Garda Síochána has gone in the opposite direction.
The successful prosecution of Barry Doyle for Shane Geoghegan’s murder shows what the force can do, and has been doing, particularly in Limerick. Dogged, old-fashioned detective work, allied with an allocation of proper resources to keep criminals under pressure, has led to major successes.
The idea that gun killings were next to impossible to solve has been shown to be wide of the mark. The work that has been done to tackle the most notorious gang in Limerick has met with major success. Members of the McCarthy-Dundon gang featured in the evidence in the Shane Geoghegan murder trial. That gang came to prominence through the early years of the last decade following the murder of drug dealer, Kieran Keane, for which two of the gang were convicted.
Even by the standards of those involved in organised crime, the McCarthy-Dundons have shown that it is possible to sink lower when it comes to cheapening human life. Yet now, through the gardaí — and in a few cases in cooperation with forces in Britain — most of the leading members are either locked up or have relocated from the city. While there are always others willing to fill the shoes of the killer, the success of tackling the gang should be recognised.
Last year the number of murders in the state was down by a quarter on the previous year. A total of 39 killings classified as murder were committed, compared to 53 in 2010. At the height of the Celtic bubble, the number recorded was 85.
Crucially, just four of the killings were attributed to organised crime, down from around two dozen during the bubble years. Of those, three were committed in Dublin, one in Cork. There were no such killings recorded in Limerick last year.
Much of the drop is down to the collapsing market in cocaine, but the work of the Gardaí has also ensured that activity among the gangs has been constrained.
Beyond detection, the bigger questions persist about gun crime in this country. How have we got to a place where human life is regarded so cheaply? Why is there an apparent constant stream of young men willing to take up a gun and kill others? Why do most people seem to care not a whit as long as one of “us”, such as Mr Geoghegan or Mr Collins, are not dragged into it?
The killing of 16-year-old Melanie McCarthy by a shotgun blast on Feb 7 illustrates the point. The teenager’s companion was believed to be the intended target of a drive-by shooting in Tallaght. When the news first broke, it might have been imagined that this was another “Veronica Guerin moment”, in which society would be equally enraged and appalled at such a crime.
Then details dribbled out about Melanie McCarthy’s background. She is from a family of settled travellers; the estate on which she lives is beset by anti-social and drug problems; there is a family connection with the McCarthy-Dundons; her boyfriend was alleged to be in some way involved in the feud.
Gradually, the outrage was reeled in. There was no impassioned or manufactured emotion spilling across the floor of the Dáil; the realisation dawned that perhaps this innocent 16-year-old wasn’t one of “us” after all. With such attitudes abroad in society, is it any wonder that sections on the margins end up feeling a total disconnect from the rest of “us”? In such a vacuum, young men already disposed towards errant behaviour find a short-cut to a place where murder is no big deal.
Barry Doyle was sentenced to life imprisonment for Shane Geoghegan’s murder last Wednesday. The nature of the crime should mean that he serves a much longer sentence than the average term of 18 years.
When he confessed to the killing in Garda custody, he showed remorse, and handed over to the officers a plastic rosary beads which he requested be given to Shane’s family. The gesture showed that despite tabloid caricatures of evil killers, many who descend to such crimes are not completely devoid of any empathic impulse.
What of the potential killers of the future? Are they destined by nature to kill, and leave families bereaved? Or can society intervene to divert them from such a destructive path? So far, the political response to gun crime has been largely confined to rhetoric and an appetite for more, largely redundant, legislation. That will do little to ensure that other families aren’t subjected to the pain suffered by families like the Geoghegans and Collins in years to come.
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