Senior gardaí face hard questions from Policing Authority

Throughout the Republic over the last week gardaí have been solving crime and preventing it, and their work has been sending people to prison.

There are hundreds of people alive to enjoy this weekend who would be dead had Garda road traffic enforcement not driven the number of road deaths to record lows in the past five to 10 years.

When trouble flares, in all its forms, and most people retreat, it is gardaí who rush in instinctively. They put their lives at risk so the rest of us don’t have to.

And some of them have lost their lives in tragic and often violent circumstances.

They do a tough job and they do it well. The majority of people in society value the Garda’s work and the fact that they do it, for the most part, unarmed.

But the force is under siege and there seems to be no relief.

The latest scathing criticism came from the Policing Authority on Thursday night after a four-hour behind-closed-doors meeting with Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan and her senior officers.

Performance failures

But unlike the reports of the Garda Inspectorate, recent O'Higgins commission and the outcome of many Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) investigations; the focus was very much on Garda management rather than the actions of those on the front line.

And at the centre of the many criticisms and concerns was the authority’s “serious concern at the recurrence of the performance failures identified by previous inquiries, including in particular the Morris tribunal and the various Garda Inspectorate reports”.

The charge, in a nutshell, is that the same shortcomings are still being identified more than a decade after they were first flagged, and remedies set out, by the Morris tribunal.

So what exactly is the Policing Authority getting at here?

The O’Higgins commission of investigation questioned allegations put forward by Garda whistleblower Sgt Maurice McCabe.

While his accusations that senior Garda officers were corrupt and that former minister for justice Alan Shatter did not act on his complaints were dismissed, other complaints about operational policing were upheld or partially upheld.

Sloppy work

Some victims were not taken seriously when they reported crimes. Other crimes were classified as minor and treated accordingly, despite the presence of extreme violence.

Basic skills such as record keeping and the filing of notes on the Garda’s computer database were very poor and victims were lied to and also not kept abreast of developments in their cases.

In one high-profile example, sloppy police work without supervision conspired with inept crime investigation, inadequate case notes and some bad luck to ensure a violent criminal was free to murder a woman.

Policing errors

This was despite his having savagely attacked a female taxi driver only to be granted bail and gone on to try to abduct a child, for which bail was granted again followed by the murder of Sylvia Roche Kelly in a Limerick hotel.

All the while there appeared to be little or no consequences for those involved in the policing errors, nor any detection and resolution of most of the problems.

The O’Higgins report also found records of crimes not properly input on the Garda’s Pulse database were doctored after they were flagged as problematic, in an apparent attempt to conceal the shortcomings.

It also found an environment where speaking up was not welcomed. And it has emerged two Garda witnesses were forced to step away from claims that McCabe told them he was motivated by vendetta after he produced a secret tape recording of their conversation that contradicted the claims.

Recent Garda Inspectorate reports and the reports by the Morris tribunal – which ran from 2002 to 2008 and probed Garda corruption in Donegal – highlighted similar problems.

The Morris tribunal found that reports of alleged crimes were not filed properly, that the investigation of crime was not supervised, adding those inquiries were at times so poorly conducted that crime scenes were at times not secured or not visited at all.

There was poor note-taking and lies were told to witnesses and victims, and to the tribunal itself.

The recent Garda Inspectorate reports have repeated those criticisms. In many cases crimes reported to the Garda were not recorded or if they were they were not classified properly.

There was inadequate supervision of young gardaí on the front line and no room for speaking up in a Garda culture that was “insular and defensive”.

Perceived ‘slowness’

Last December in its Changing Policing in Ireland report, the Garda Inspectorate noted that remedies it had previously recommended for shortcomings on governance, supervision, performance management and other issues had been accepted by the Garda at the time but not acted upon.

There was also a perception of “slowness” in some of the Garda’s work.

On a wider level, long delays in Garda management even considering and replying to the Inspectorate’s reports were common and were simply part of the Garda culture for decades now.

And Gsoc, which investigates complaints made about gardaí, has pointed to how slowly Garda Headquarters has been at times in responding to requests for documents and evidence it sought.

The Morris tribunal, Garda Inspectorate and Gsoc have all pointed to a culture of Garda management closing ranks when allegations are made; with the default position one of self-preservation and valuing loyalty over honesty.

But while the Morris tribunal and Garda Inspectorate have flagged the shortcomings repeated by the O’Higgins report of earlier this month, and set out their recommendations for change, there is little by way of subsequent audits to check progress.

And there has been no consequence if changes are not made.

Uncharted waters

But in the case of the Policing Authority, the Garda’s senior management is in uncharted waters.

For example, it will call O’Sullivan and her senior team before it to be questioned in public sessions that will be streamed online.

And before the next meeting in three weeks, Garda management has been told to publish some of its policies and public attitude surveys.

The Garda must act immediately or risk public embarrassment in a just a few weeks.

That looks like a much more aggressive and in-a-hurry oversight animal than anything we’ve seen to date.