If it's quiet, the problems are just around the corner

IT IS a relatively quiet evening in Dun Laoghaire Garda Station, headquarters of F District and the hub of DMA East.

The station computer has logged calls from a person in Killiney who wants to discuss a possible fraud and from someone in Dalkey who suspects a next door neighbour of using a gun in his back garden.

The latter call is confused by the fact that the complainant suspects the neighbour has used the gun previously to shoot the complainant's cat. Either way, the report will have to be investigated, as will three house alarms which have gone off in quick succession, all in the area of Foxrock.

Meanwhile, one of the uniformed officers arrives in the station with a jar of pills he has taken from a suspect interviewed, in the town centre. The pills look like prescribed drugs and the jar is labelled Ibuprofen", but the garda has reason to suspect that they were intended for sale in a nightclub, where with the help of darkness and alcohol they might look like ecstasy.

This is not a matter for the drugs squad. A local chemist will be able to confirm if the pills were what the jar describes them to be and, if so, no offence has been committed.

The station's six holding cells are all empty, but one of the interview rooms is occupied by a man who has been arrested, according to the custody received, for alleged larceny and drunk and disorderly behaviour and who has described himself, according to the same book, as being mentally challenged".

His condition in the interview room must be checked at least as often as every 30 minutes by the station house sergeant, or a deputy, who is responsible for his wellbeing while in the station. His condition on each occasion is noted in the log, along with the time.

If he is kept for the night, he will be checked with equal frequency and greater if, as in the present case, he is under the influence. If drunk or on drugs, he will be roused from sleep every 15 minutes, for his own safety.

Quiet as it may seem now problems are always just around the corner. Because of its location, DMA East has at least two diplomatic difficulties to contend with one concerns the many embassies and/or ambassadorial residences within the area, including the home of the British ambassador.

The second concerns the Dun Laoghaire ferry port, which is subject to its own harbour police. There is a small Garda office in the terminal buildings, staffed by a garda and a sergeant. But with a projected two million passengers soon to pass through the port annually, the presence, if not the role, of the Garda Siochana will certainly expand.

The future of the harbour police is likely to be in some form of semi state employment. In the meantime, their relationship with the law enforcers is still evolving, and the gardai are very aware of the sensitivities of the harbour police.

The two problems came into' focus yesterday afternoon when there was a traffic accident on one of the port access roads. This is automatically a matter for the gardai, although directing traffic around the accident, for instance, remains the work of the harbourmaster and his police.

Yesterday's accident was further confused by the fact that the driver of the car was attached to a foreign embassy a circumstance attested, to by the corps diplomatique initials on his registration plates and by the fact that he spoke no English. An anglophone representative from the embassy was hastily summoned, so that the necessary investigation could be completed. Diplomatic immunity means that a criminal prosecution even if much were warranted is unlikely, but gardai still investigated the circumstances of the accident as they normally would, since they could be witnesses for either side in a civil case.

A far cry from the clean, modernist architecture of the new ferryport is the Mounttown flats complex. Here, one of two community officers attached to Kill of the Grange Garda Station, Garda Vinnie Totterdell, patrols a beat which also takes in the companion housing scheme of Fitzgerald Park.

The area became briefly notorious last year when the Dublin County Coroner, Dr Bartley Sheehan, described a flat in which three people had died from drug overdoses as a nest of vipers".

It emerged that the tenant, an addict who was himself seriously ill, had been unable to control access to his home, which had gradually become a magnet for drug abusers. Residents and local agencies eventually combined to have the man relocated. But, before this could happen, there was a gas explosion at the flat and the man fell from the third storey balcony to his death.

His burned out flat is still vacant and unrepaired in Mounttown, but the area is showing some resilience. A vibrant resource centre opened three yearn ago by President Robinson offers child minding and other facilities to the residents, who now vet new arrival in the flats.

There are 600 children aged under 14 in the 200 flats, according to Garda Totterdell, who goes by his first name in an area in which most ordinary gardai would expect abuse.

Gardai have mixed feelings about one recent change in the locality's infrastructure. A row of permanent bollards now blocks the exit on the Monkstown side, the residents' response to another problem joy riding.

The roadblock has achieved its primary aim, but in doing so has left the complex with only one access road, leaving Garda cars and other vehicles liable to occasional stoning.

As befits his role, Vinnie is involved in the community beyond the strict call of duty. He liaises with the residents' committee very regularly, organises trips for the children, and helps raise funds for such facilities as exist at the flats the goal posts of Mounttown's football pitch were one of his little initiatives.

Just for good measure, he is a member of the Dun Laoghaire lifeboat crew and organises hampers for the needy at Christmas. A more formal part of his role and that of all community gardai involves visits to the local primary schools, where the fifth class of every year is targeted for guidance.

Garda Totterdell reckons that, of the 600 children, as few as 20 may be destined to be future hard cases. You can nearly predict them from the start," he says. But, with institutionalised poverty and virtually certain unemployment facing, them fathers absent and sometimes in prison, and no shortage of bad example, it's easier to predict than to stop them.