A man purporting to be a member of An Garda Síochána has appeared on a popular online forum volunteering to answer questions about the work of the force.
Writing under pseudonym “Magnum IP”, the supposed garda held a live questions-and-answer session on Reddit, a link-sharing site on Monday and continued posting yesterday. The site’s profile got a major boost last month when US president Barack Obama appeared there unannounced and invited voters to “ask me anything”.
Monday’s online conversation with the garda, who described himself as “in my 40s” attracted over 500 comments on the site. Vowing to “answer questions as honestly as I can”, he dealt with everything from Garda checkpoints to being unarmed, to how he deals with drugs offences.
Asked what he would do if he “caught a guy smoking a joint or with a small amount of weed/hash”, he said: “Personally I would take it and destroy it, if he/she was known to me I would record it in my notebook and take no further action . . . A particularly nice and friendly person would be allowed to keep their weed.”
Quizzed on his soft approach, he said, his motivation was not to ruin someone’s life with a drugs conviction.
A spokesman from the Garda Press Office said while the office did not comment on third-party online material, social media sites were monitored and “where there is breach of garda regulation, internal disciplinary action can be invoked”.
