The Gardaí say serious crime is down. As against that, gun crime is up. Possession of firearms increased significantly, as did shootings.
How reliable are the figures? The Gardaí swear by them. They’re alone in that. Everyone knows someone who’s been robbed.
Newspaper reports on the gangs that make up the criminal elite make Dublin, Cork and especially Limerick sound like Chicago in the late 1920s.
The involvement of paramilitaries is also reported. In May the Northern Ireland Crime Task Force alleged that more than 150 gangs with links to paramilitaries, including the IRA, the UVF and the UDA, are netting ‘tens of millions of pounds’ from crimes such as drugs dealing, armed robberies, extortion and racketeering.
Indeed, in mid-March the leading tobacco firm Gallaher looked for a meeting with the Northern Secretary Paul Murphy, to discuss security for its lorries along the border. This followed the hijacking of a truck in December with cigarettes worth £1m.
The belief that crime is on an upward spiral was influenced by reports of street disorder and ‘youth thuggery’. They included murders for mobile phones. But the most celebrated case involved a group of young middle class males charged with various crimes arising from the notorious incident outside Annabel’s nightclub in which Brian Murphy was killed.
This generated an unprecedented media feeding frenzy, emphasising their school, backgrounds, girlfriends. But the person who delivered the fatal blows wasn’t tried. As the trial judge commented, “It is surprising that some witnesses interviewed by Gardaí were not able to identify the persons kicking the victim in the head”…
The whole thing was a disgrace, not in any way alleviated by posturing and hand-wringing by the great and good wondering how it had come to this.