Irish Examiner view: Reinforcements needed to turn tide

Amid worrying increases in public disorder and attacks on his officers, Commissioner Drew Harris also identified huge backlogs in investigating child sexual abuse, caused by exponential demand for such imagery and the proliferation of the number of platforms capable of processing and storing it. Picture: Domnick Walsh

There is a metaphor in the Old Testament (Psalm 139: 17-18), concerning the futility of counting the number of grains of sand on the beach, which is called to mind by one of the latest statements from Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.

Amid worrying increases in public disorder and attacks on his officers, Mr Harris also identified huge backlogs in investigating child sexual abuse, caused by exponential demand for such imagery and the proliferation of the number of platforms capable of processing and storing it.

When Mr Harris became a constable in the North in 1983, the worldwide web did not exist. 

It arrived, invented by Tim Berners-Lee, at the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, Cern, in Switzerland, in 1989, the same year that Mr Harris’s father was assassinated by the Provisional IRA. 

It was the coming of the internet in a highly accessible form, allied to what became known as Moore’s Law, that computing capacity doubles every two years at much reduced costs, that has produced one of the greatest challenges of modern policing.

In the Republic, there is a three-year backlog in examining digital devices for child abuse material, a problem created firstly by the range of technologies which require scrutiny — smartphones, laptops, desktops, mini-pads, disk drives, USB keys, gaming consoles, CCTV systems, cloud storage — and secondly by the increase in the distribution of images.

Last summer, the Policing Authority described the delays as a “critical weakness” for the force and the minutes of a recent private meeting show that the problems continue to create anxiety and frustration.

Encryption, the scrambling of data so that only sender and receiver can see it, is an obstacle and there is still no resolution on a data-sharing agreement between gardaí and Tusla, Ireland’s child and family agency.

The forensic examination of equipment is through the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau, and it is acknowledged that further recruitment is required, although such expertise is heavily in demand in commercial and public sectors.

When Hercules was called upon to clear 30 years of filth from the Augean stables for his fifth labour, he carried out the task in a single day by diverting the cleansing waters of two rivers through the byres. 

Mr Harris does not have mythical superpowers at his disposal so this is a matter which can only be addressed by planning, determination, systems, and resources. 

Those resources, as we have seen in this week’s disturbances in Ballyfermot and attacks on members of An Garda Síochána there and elsewhere, are heavily in demand for all aspects of policing. 

The Government has made promises on increasing numbers in ranks which are falling far short. 

With around 1,000 incidents a year where a garda is listed as an injured party, much more has to be done, not only on recruitment, but retention. A society which cannot police itself is but one step away from anarchy.