Cork Superintendent warns people not to heed social media efforts to stir up protest

'I want to help people, not make life difficult for them': Garda Superintendent Gary McPolin at Mallow Garda Station where he took on his current role last December. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
It was just weeks after Superintendent Gary McPolin was appointed to his current role in north Cork when gardaí swooped on the homes of suspects in an early-morning raid in Mallow, Co Cork, puncturing a long-running family feud.
Some 70 officers, aided by the Defence Forces, Revenue Customs, and the Department of Social Protection, searched 17 locations in the area in January.
Weapons — including a gun, machetes, and knives — were seized, along with cocaine, cannabis, and “a significant quantity of cigarettes”. Five people were arrested that day.
It was a case of hitting the ground running in his new role for the superintendent who now faces another complex family feud in nearby Charleville.
That has already seen a child transferred to Temple Street hospital for emergency surgery after masked men armed with suspected slash hooks broke into her home in recent weeks.
As far as McPolin is concerned, such behaviour is “unacceptable, inexcusable, and will not be tolerated, either by the local people or by the gardaí.”
Gardaí in Cork are now working with gardaí in Limerick to tackle the feud.
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Supt McPolin has ample previous experience tackling difficult crimes, having formerly policed the Kinahan cartel’s home turf in the Oliver Bond flats in Dublin’s inner city when he was superintendent in Kevin Street Garda Station — one of the busiest stations in the country.
While rural Cork districts may present different challenges than those facing inner city Dublin, Supt McPolin has not had a massive change of pace, with a wide range of policing areas to oversee over a large and expanding geographic area.
“It’s a new change. A new dawn,” he said.
When he first took over in Mallow last December, it also encompassed the districts of Kanturk (which once had its own superintendent) and Charleville.
However, that district expanded in August to take in his home town of Macroom and the surrounding West Cork areas, including Rathmore, Ballingeary, and Inchigeela. It is now called the Cork North West Community Engagement Functional Area.
“It is a big area, and community policing will be a huge part of it,” Supt McPolin said.
“I believe in high-visibility policing and community engagement, with the general public co-operating with us.
“The reason we do what we do is to save lives, protect lives and make sure that the roads and the streets are safe.”
The superintendent is keen to continue to foster good relations between the local community and local gardaí. And he is adamant that he will not allow those communities to suffer from thuggery and crime.
Roads policing, community policing, and working with young people are among the core focuses of his tenure.
Arson and assault, including by any anti-immigrant groups, will not be tolerated by anyone in his district. And while Supt McPolin said he will protect people’s right to protest, he will not tolerate violence, criminal damage, or intimidation.
“You have people going around burning down buildings, threatening people, breaking the law. Someone could be seriously injured or killed. There are other ways of conveying your issues and discussing concerns in public foras and with public representatives.
"People cannot take the law into their own hands.”
“What gives them the right to damage people’s property?
"People are aggravating the situation.”
Misinformation on social media, which is inaccurate and provocative, is being spread and certain individuals can be easily led and manipulated by it, he said. "Then they think they have the right to engage in criminal, antisocial behaviour.
“Vigilante behaviour is not acceptable, full stop. I’ll have no tolerance [for it] whatsoever.”
“One little twerp living at home with mammy minding him can write as if he’s a gladiator with lies and rubbish which can rouse certain individuals. And the fewer the facts the larger the opinion.“
"Faceless individuals are hiding behind masks of deceit and, through IT, stirring up protest and intimidating, spreading revenge porn, exercising coercive control, being involved in drug debt intimidation. Through IT, people can access other people more easily now.”
He said that a surge in online crime — scams, bullying, criminal online communications — has changed and continues to change the nature of policing, with gardaí now searching servers for evidence as well as physical real-life spaces.
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The Dublin riots last November were near Kevin Street, and gardaí there worked closely with their colleagues across the river that fateful night.

One colleague lost a toe while policing the riots.
“Things very quickly escalated in Dublin during the riots,” Supt McPolin said. “Three members of my team in Kevin Street were injured on the night. They were facing adversity and were very brave in the way they behaved.”
Gardaí are now generally suffering increased aggression on the streets, he said.
Phones are too often shoved in the faces of gardaí, and edited clips of the footage are then shared online to distort the narrative and manipulate the viewer’s understanding of an event, he said.

“It has curbed some guards’ enthusiasm to effect an arrest. It has not stopped gardaí from doing their jobs. But there’s so much oversight now it has made gardaí think more deeply than they should in circumstances where an arrest should be expeditious.
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“I’d be 100% behind body-worn cameras because I think there’s be less defence and less time wasted in court. People can see exactly what the garda was dealing with.
“A lot of gardaí are being injured, and sometimes you have people recording instead of helping and intervening.”
He insists that people have a civic duty to assist when someone is being assaulted.
“Post-covid, there’s a different mindset: People are less tolerant, more demanding. There seems to be a lot more aggravation and aggression. There’s less patience there.
“I think drugs contribute to that. And there’s a general malaise at taking direction. There can be a lack of good manners.”
Drugs are being used by people of all ages in north Cork as well as in more urban areas, he said.
“There’s cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines, ecstasy... I know of people who had drug dependencies that cost them their marriage and their jobs.
“And people are starting younger. The evil perpetrators are using youngsters, children, to distribute their ill-gotten product. And anyone buying drugs is supporting a drug cartel.”
Supt McPolin was involved in talks to bring the first medically-supervised injection centre to Merchant’s Quay homeless and addiction charity in Dublin so that drug users can inject more safely in a bid to save lives and link people with medical and social services.
“I don’t think we’ve lost the war on drugs. But it’s an evolving issue,” he said.
“The type of drugs people use are changing. I observed a change from people using diamorphine — heroin — to smoking crack cocaine. And that created a different kind of dilemma for us. And there was an upsurge in cocaine use and cannabis use.”
People high on cocaine can be “in a hyper frenzied state,” he said.
“When you try to restrain them they come back harder and stronger.”
But community groups in some inner city neighbourhoods like Oliver Bond, are helping sweep the scourge of drugs and criminality away from their doorsteps, he said.
“Fantastic work is being done by the people living there, in regeneration projects and community forums and different community groups.
"People living there are trying to work, raise their families, give their children a good education, but all it takes is one particular family, or a small section of the community, to give the whole area a bad name.
"But there are fantastic people there doing fantastic work.
“And community policing there was very strong with inspectors and very good sergeants who drove on the community policing model.”
In Gurranabraher — an area in Cork city’s northside where he was previously stationed — he also saw “huge progress” thanks to the efforts of local councillors, community groups, Youth Reach, and juvenile liaison projects — as well as garda sergeants John Dwyer and Mick O’Connell who “did huge work” in the area.
Supt McPolin spent time as a prosecutor in the busy Anglesea St Courthouse in Cork.
That experience led him to complete a criminal justice Masters degree in law in University College Cork, in which he examined the criminalisation of people with mental disorders.
“A lot of mental health facilities have been closed down with deinstitutionalisation. And I saw that in court when I was prosecutor as an inspector, that a lot of the previous convictions would have been for intoxications and drugs.
“In other jurisdictions, in New South Wales in Australia, they have mental health courts and a person can be directed to a mental health facility or hospital rather than incarceration. So just the real criminals are being locked up in the prisons.
“You would see people, day in day out, in the courts and I knew they weren’t criminals. They had serious dependency issues but they weren’t bad people really.”
Supt McPolin has worked in some of the busiest urban stations in Dublin and Cork but also in West Cork, Waterford, and Wexford.
“In an urban setting you’ve more backup, you have specialised units. In more rural areas you have bigger areas to patrol with less gardaí.
“You have to be able to talk people down in more rural areas, whereas you might effect arrest quicker, or react quicker in urban areas.”
Gardaí who formerly worked with Supt McPolin said he was ‘proper police’, respected both for his courage and accomplishments in frontline policing and as a fair and decent manager.
And he has true blue blood. His father was a garda in Macroom and his brother, Barry McPolin, was a former chief superintendent in Cork City.
Taking over as superintendent in Mallow and Macroom has allowed Gary McPolin return to his home in Cork after years leading busy policing units in Dublin.
This included responsibility for closing Ireland’s biggest motorways during a historic global pandemic when he spent two years managing Dublin roads policing from Dublin Castle, starting his post there mid-covid.
Gardaí had the difficult job of enforcing travel restrictions, having to turn back people wanting to visit the graves of their loved one while allowing essential workers through.
“It was a very sad time for people who felt they couldn’t properly mourn their loved ones — and gardaí had the difficult task of adjudicating on the roadside who could go through and who could not,” Supt McPolin said.
“And there were protests by people who felt the travel bans were an encroachment on their democratic rights.
“At the time, we did not know what the long-term impacts of covid would be. It was difficult to police because we did not want to be too dystopian or oppressive but we had to adhere to government and HSE guidelines.”
Supt McPolin then moved to Kevin Street Garda Station in Dublin city as Superintendent of Community Policing.
“It was like New York," he says. "It was a place that never stopped.”
His role included policing major sporting events in the Aviva, major concerts, protests, and general policing in a busy inner-city area.
Supt McPolin said he enjoyed his experience working across the country.
“I lived with my sister in Dublin. It was a good experience but it can be challenging living from a suitcase. I learned a lot from my travels — it’s good to get out of your comfort zone.”
However, he is happy to now be back in Cork.
“Great work has been done before my appointment, by previous superintendents and the people who are here.
"We really appreciate the friendship afforded to us by the people of north Cork and we want to continue with that relationship and journey and to protect and serve the people that I work for.
“I want to help people, not make life difficult for them.”
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