Concerns about quality of garda training
THERE was one case in the Guerin report that didn’t get any publicity, despite its seriousness.
Unlike most of the cases complained about by Sergeant Maurice McCabe, Guerin said the case didn’t warrant further investigation, mainly because the victim didn’t want to pursue it.
The victim in the case, Ms Brown, told an investigator, Sergeant Michael Galvin, in September 2009 that she had problems with new members from Bailieboro Garda Station.
She said she had a poor working relationship with them. Ms Brown said she had been threatened by one garda who allegedly said to her that “if she was done, she would get her”.
She mentioned a specific incident in which there was delay in responding to a 999 call and said that she felt “the public will get done if they complain about younger guards”.
The woman also said that one of her children had been in trouble with the guards and that she felt that he is being “harassed by junior members of Bailieboro station”.
In his report, Sgt Galvin said: “In my opinion, she had a grievance which she would not expand on. She appears to be an honest and sincere person and her allegations must be treated seriously and are not without foundation.”
The woman’s problem appeared to stem from an accident in which a family member of hers was involved and she had been unhappy with the report forwarded by the garda member who investigated the accident.
A subsequent report by Chief Supt Terry McGinn said it was “unacceptable that any member would verbally assault [Ms Brown]”. Guerin said Chief McGinn identified this incident and another matter to which she referred as pointing towards “a breakdown in community engagement in Bailieboro and may well be symptomatic of a deeper malaise”.
So does this case — and all the other cases highlighted by Guerin — point to a wider malaise in terms of the quality of gardaí that came from Templemore College.
Almost all the cases examined by Guerin threw up the same problems: Crimes poorly investigated by young gardaí; shoddy, and sometimes abusive, treatment of victims; and a lack of supervision.
Guerin said the investigations were conducted by “inexperienced probationary gardaí” and that there was “little, and in some cases no, evidence of appropriate supervision”.
He said the deficiencies could be due to professional failings of individual gardaí and/or their supervisors as well as systemic issues, such as a high ratio of probationers to supervisors.
He said there had been a 63% increase in probationary gardaí in the Bailieborough district prior to Superintendent Foxtrot taking charge. (He was the main subject of Sgt McCabe’s complaints.)
Guerin said this level of inexperience presented a “significant supervisory and management challenge”.
Regarding the possibility of professional failings of individuals, this begs the question: what kind of training did they receive in the Garda College?
Consistent concerns have been raised over the years by garda staff associations about the quality of training provided at Templemore during the Celtic Tiger years.
The “accelerated recruitment” programme under then justice minister, Michael McDowell, saw the strength of the force increasing by 2,650, from 11,895 in 2002 to 14,547 in 2009.
But the staff bodies were worried about ability to train such numbers.
The general secretary of the Garda Representative Association PJ Stone told the Irish Examiner yesterday: “The GRA had its concerns over the quality of training during the period of extended recruitment and these were voiced informally; but the political powers of the time were pushing hard for 16,000 gardaí and our concerns were ignored.
“We repeatedly campaigned for recruitment to be consistent and continual, with between 400 and 600 recruits annually. Our caution was unheeded.”
At the annual conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors in 2011, the now president Tim Galvin said that the “aggressive intake” of recruits in the previous years meant that up to 300 trainees were crammed into classes.
“They were not getting proper training because the numbers were too big,” said Mr Galvin
He said there was even a small number in the college that year who were writing their dissertation for the fourth time, having failing on three occasions already.
A separate garda source said that training standards at the college had been set by previous internal reports — the Walsh report of 1985 and the Keating report of 1997.
“They set out training structures,” he said. “For example, it said a maximum of 420 should go through the college in a year, it set the training ratio and the ratio of training sergeants in the divisions to probationers. That was removed under accelerated recruitment. They just abandoned it.”
He said trainees were not given any driver training, any training in self-defence, or any firearms training, and that continuing professional development also went.
He said recruits in the past used to see mock court cases, with district court judges and solicitors from the Law Society, but that was cut.
“They suddenly got the resources for accelerated recruitment and brought them in by the busloads and put them in a lecture hall for five hours each day,” said the source.
The source believes that “all this played a part in what Guerin identified” and likened it to asking a young man to drive a Formula 1 car without being trained.
“It’s not nice as a guard reading the Guerin report,” he said. “It’s embarrassing to read those cases, of crime victims being treated bad. The vast majority of gardaí are decent — but that decency is instilled in the training. If they were properly trained it might not have happened.”
Following concerns to garda management from staff bodies, a major review was ordered in 2008 and published in February 2010.
In a key finding, the Training and Development Report said: “Concerns were identified about the current student/probationer programme with regard to the capacity to produce probationers that are fully prepared for delivering core garda duties.”
It added: “A significant number of changes should be made to the programme to ensure the student/probationer is fully equipped to fulfil their role in frontline operational policing.”
It recommended a new structure that would increase the number of probationary gardaí involved in visible policing. Key to this was enhanced support at station level, with field-training tutors, i.e. a supervisory sergeant, responsible for the young garda.
Implementation of that policy was promised back in 2010, but it is not clear to what extent it is in place for the new recruits this July.
The sergeant shortage has been documented for many years, particularly by the AGSI, and is not new to the ministries of justice and public expenditure.
Not only is there a dire shortage of training sergeants, but also regular unit sergeants and station sergeants, who, among other things, handle prisoners.
One senior officer in Dublin said: “Lack of resources is my biggest problem. We are stretched beyond belief. I have vacancies across the board at detective level. I have a huge geographical area yet just one sergeant to look after all the prisoners coming into the stations.”
The cut in the size in the force from 14,500 to almost 13,000 now has hit all levels hard, including sergeants, with 126 vacancies.
A report by the Garda Inspectorate, published in 2013, highlighted the seriousness of the problem — echoing the situation revealed by Guerin.
“Young, less experienced members of the organisation in many areas of the country are working without adequate supervision,” said the report, Front-Line Supervision.
It said, nominally, there was one sergeant to every six gardaí — which it said was adequate. But it said, in reality, it was a lot less and said this was a “significant concern”. It said many sergeants were performing “cumbersome administrative duties”, adding, “this is an unacceptable situation”.
It said that, in some cases, gardaí were performing the duties of sergeants.
The inspectorate said sergeants of regular units told them they were “overwhelmed” by bureaucracy and estimated they patrolled with their units in the field only 10% of the time.
Commenting, Mr Stone said: “We have continually raised concerns over the lack of supervision of young inexperienced gardaí — the direct result has been these gardaí becoming subject to discipline regulations through no fault of their own. Our concerns have been met with a stock answer: we are to do the best we can with the resources available.”
Now, the inspectorate is being tasked again, by new justice minister Frances Fitzgerald, to conduct “a comprehensive inquiry into serious crime investigation, management, operational and procedural issues”.
Ms Fitzgerald said the Guerin report had raised concerns about professional standards, training, supervision of probationers and local management — in other words “basic policing”.
It will be another noble report, like the Training Report and the Front-Line Supervision study. Let’s see if it gathers dust or is acted upon.
On February 25, 2007, minibus driver Lorraine Browne rang Bailieboro Garda Station seeking help to deal with men who were refusing to leave the vehicle and had harassed, abused, and threatened her and other passengers and groped female passengers.
Probationer garda Garda Alpha* recorded on the Pulse system that: “Three males caused disturbance on minibus on Main Street, Kingscourt. To proceed by summons.”
Sgt McCabe complained that no investigation file was completed because Garda Alpha told Ms Browne she had no case and facilitated the payment of €150 to her from the suspects on the understanding that she would withdraw her complaint.
He complained that the incident potentially involved false imprisonment and sexual assault.
Guerin said Ms Browne’s detailed statement was not properly considered by Garda Alpha, his supervising officer, or a superintendent who looked into the matter.
A training sergeant reviewing Garda Alpha’s work was concerned by the incident and said it merited disciplinary investigation.
The training sergeant’s report went through a superintendent and chief superintendent — all the way to an assistant commissioner at Garda HQ. Despite this, Guerin found no evidence of any action taken.
Mr White* was hospitalised with head injuries after an assault outside the Lakeside Manor Hotel in Virginia, Co Cavan, early on April 14, 2007.
Garda Echo* identified two men as involved and one was charged with assault causing harm. He arrested and questioned the second man but released him without charge.
The case was due to come before the court when Sgt McCabe reviewed it and found Garda Echo had failed to obtain CCTV footage from the hotel and had not interviewed witnesses.
Adjournments were sought to try to get the CCTV images but an inexplicable technical problem arose and they were not obtained. The judge dismissed the case with criticism of the Garda investigation.
Sgt McCabe raised the matter with a superintendent who accepted mistakes were made, but put it down to Garda Echo’s inexperience; said he would take action if there was a repeat of the failings; and put Sgt McCabe in charge of monitoring Garda Echo. Sgt McCabe was unhappy with this outcome and complained that disciplinary proceedings should have been taken.
Mr Guerin noted no report of Garda Echo’s breaches was made and said the superintendent’s warning against a repeat was inadequate given that junior officers only spent short periods in the district.
A fast-food restaurant worker who called gardaí after a man urinated into a vinegar bottle and left it on a table complained of intimidation after two gardaí brought the culprit to her and urged her to talk to him. She was also subsequently fobbed off with excuses about the progress of the investigation after she asked for it to be pursued.
Sgt McCabe complained about the way the injured party was treated but Supt Terry McGinn, who examined the complaint, while finding the matter was not investigated properly, also blamed Sgt McCabe for not taking sufficient action on the issue.
A 17-year-old girl reported being followed and grabbed by a man, who covered her mouth, while walking home in the early hours of September 2, 2007.
She escaped, but the subsequent investigation was carried out by an inexperienced probationer garda and despite claims that CCTV footage was sought and surveillance of a suspect carried out, there were no records of this.
One man was arrested, who did not fit the girl’s descriptions.
People ejected from a nightclub on St Stephen’s Night 2007 got into a car which was reversed at speed, knocking a man to the ground, and then driven forward at speed, striking another person.
The incident was logged on Pulse as a traffic incident with non-serious injury.
Seán Guerin said that, despite the many witnesses, “no real investigation took place for some considerable time” and no prosecution resulted. Sgt McCabe complained about the handling of the case, and Mr Guerin said he was unfairly implicated in the investigation’s shortcomings.
A man was assaulted in a pub in Bailieborough in May 2007 but later withdrew his complaint in unclear circumstances, and witnesses were not interviewed.
CCTV footage from the pub was not sought for six months and not examined for another four months, at which point it was realised the system only retained images for three days. The case went to the DPP but no prosecution could be brought. Sgt McCabe complained about the handling of the case and an inquiry blamed the CCTV system. Seán Guerin said there was no fault with the system but with the failure to obtain the footage in a timely fashion.
