Irish Examiner view: Gardaí deserve our support

Community support

Supt Tony Twomey, Insp Paul Mayock,  and Insp Dave Kemp are applauded outside Ballyfermot Garda Station, where locals held a rally in support of Gardaí.

The appalling footage circulated on social media of gardaí being attacked in Ballyfermot has served one purpose.

It has brought home to people all over Ireland the exact nature of the threats faced by members of our police force every time they don their uniforms and go to work. In that sense it illustrates what happens on our streets more vividly than a thousand second-hand testimonies.

Such footage, however, also functions as a desensitising agent. The level of outrage generated among the public at large by such video clips is bound to dip if they become more common and as a sheen of normalisation begins to accrue; as a consequence, such footage must never be seen as unsurprising or unexpected and must be utterly condemned.

That said, it was heartening to see the outpouring of support from people in Ballyfermot within 24 hours of the original incident, when a large group of residents came to the local Garda station in a show of solidarity with the gardaí.

Clearly, the people of the area are appreciative of the work being done by gardaí in the area — work which may not be eye-catching or sensational but which helps to strengthens the bond in an area in order to create a stronger community to the benefit of all.

The authority of the force comes primarily from the respect it is held in, and that respect is driven in turn by the fact that gardaí are embedded in the communities they serve — a point illustrated by the support shown in Ballyfermot by other members of that community.

The dramatic intervention may get more attention — there was a case in point on Tuesday evening in Cork, when a woman went into the river in the vicinity of Kennedy Quay, and a garda went in after her to help (unlike the events in Ballyfermot, there doesn’t seem to be any video footage circulating of that incident) — but the gardaí deserve our support in all their endeavours, whether those endeavours are headline-worthy or not.