Board worried as complaints against gardai are dropped

Allegations that gardai interfered with people who made complaints against them are raised in the annual report from the Garda Complaints Board.

The strongly worded report expresses "deep concern" at a "a serious lack of confidence in the current complaints system itself".

Published yesterday, it says there are "grave concerns" that "pressure may have been put on complainants by members of the Garda Siochana to drop their complaints" in two cases.

No actual complaint was made to the board about these incidents, however, so "the only action open to the board was to bring the matter to the attention of the Director of Public Prosecutions and to request the Garda Commissioner to conduct such investigations as he considered appropriate".

In each of these cases the members of the public withdrew their complaints against the individual gardai because they "had been informed that the Garda Siochana would drop a prosecution being taken against them if they would drop their complaint".

The first case involved an allegation by a complainant that he had been verbally abused by a garda and assaulted on a number of occasions while handcuffed. Following an investigation by the board, the DPP had instructed that the garda be prosecuted. The case against the garda was dropped when the complainant withdrew his complaint

The second case also involved alleged assault by a garda while in custody. The DPP decided not to charge that garda. However, a second complaint to the board that the garda falsely charged the complainant with assault was later withdrawn. As far as the complainant understood, "the gardai were offering to drop the prosecution against him in return for dropping his complaint".

This matter was also referred to the DPP. The report does not state the DPP's decision in this subsequent allegation.

The report into the board's business in 1999 repeats its concerns as expressed in the 1998 report. It again calls for a radical overhaul of the Complaints Board and an amendment to the 1986 Act which established it.

Most fundamentally a lack of public confidence in the board "stems from a belief that the Garda Siochana (Complaints) Act 1986 does not provide either an independent or effective system for dealing with complaints", says the report.

The board is unable to "deal with complaints within a reasonable timescale", it goes on. While all should be dealt with within four to six months, the board is taking, in some cases, more than a year to dispose of complaints. Almost since its establishment, the board "has not been provided with sufficient staff to deal with its workload".

The board, which has a staff of 18, now has a backlog of almost two years. It should have 23 staff and currently has more than 900 cases on hand, compared with 388 in 1997.

The board calls for seven major changes. These include the need for board staff to be independent of the Department of Justice; the establishment of an independent civilian unit; and the right to decide on the level of supervision of investigations.

The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, welcomed the report and said the current complaints machinery was "not satisfactory".

"This is a matter the Minister is addressing under a major review he is carrying out in the field of Garda complaints generally," a Department spokesman said.

A source in the board's operating staff said the Minister had "said that four or five times before, but where's the action?".

The Labour spokesman on justice, Mr Brendan Howlin, renewed his party's call for a Garda Ombudsman. The report was proof of the need for a radical transformation in the existing procedures, he said.

"I think we need to go further than advocated by the board. We need to start again and establish a totally independent police Ombudsman."