An unfair cop

We’re getting used to the light, now we’ve pulled back the curtains. Time to start turning over stones, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphors. After the politicians, poltroons and priests come the police.

Of course, just as there are many good politicians and priests, so too are there many good policemen and women. But it’s a mark of the times that two tribunals are examining matters to do with the Garda Siochána. The Morris Tribunal is examining allegations of corruption against members of the force in Donegal, and the Barr Tribunal is focused on the shooting in Abbeylara of John Carthy by members of the Garda Emergency Response Unit.

However, public disquiet with the police extends way beyond these two matters. Two stories in particular stick out during 2002. The first is the violence exercised by Gardaí on demonstrators in a ‘Reclaim The Streets’ rally in Dame Street in Dublin.

One of their number was filmed hammering away at protestors with his truncheon – he had no numbers visible. Many witnesses accused the Garda Síochàna of excessive violence. Cameras were confiscated and film or batteries removed. With little room to manoeuvre – the videos were explosive – the then Minister John O’Donoghue ordered ‘a full report’ into the allegations. It is now said that charges may be on their way.

The second was the news in August of the victory of Frank Shortt in the Court of Criminal Appeal. He served a three-year sentence for knowingly allowing his premises to be used for the sale of drugs. That conviction was overturned in 2000 on the grounds that newly discovered facts rendered it unsafe.

In issuing only the second miscarriage of justice certificate in the history of the State, Mr Justice Hardiman pulled no punches. In his decision, he said that two Garda witnesses in the case “consciously and deliberately” invented evidence. Consequently an innocent man was framed and wound up with a sentence of three years.

This is the backdrop for the Morris Inquiry. This is examining the Shortt case and the McBrearty case, another instance in which it is alleged that innocent people, in this case a whole family, were hounded and harassed, and that evidence was falsified and the course of justice perverted. There’s more, including allegations that explosives were planted in Northern Ireland. And throughout the various court cases and inquiries a cast that would do Shakespeare proud has made its appearance, villains, victims, clowns and clods, women fallen and raised alike.

It’s going to make a great read as it unfolds.