Gardai recover Loaded rocket launchers

Turner

Well done to all involved.

From Breakingnews.ie



Two loaded rocket launchers capable of blasting an armoured car were discovered in a lock-up today as detectives closed in on a criminal gang.

An AK-47 assault rifle and nine kilos of cocaine – with a street value of €630,000 – were also found in the warehouse off a main road near Clane, Co Kildare.

Armed gardaí from the Organised Crime Unit uncovered the cache of lethal weapons after the arrest of four men over an earlier drugs bust.

Detectives believe the haul, one of the most lethal linked to gangland crime, was being held by a south Dublin gang. The rocket launchers were ready to be fired.

A security source said the military-style short range weapons, known as RPGs and fired from the shoulder, would have been imported from Eastern Europe.

“These could take out an armoured car,” he said. “There is great concern they are on the streets in Ireland.”

It is believed the weapons were hidden in green oil drums inside the lock-up. They have now been made safe and removed.

The four men being questioned were alleged to be members of a south Dublin drugs gang involved in the bloody Crumlin/Drimnagh feud which has resulted in more than a dozen gun murders.

Their notorious gangland boss is believed to hiding out in Spain after several threats were made to his life.

“We didn’t get him unfortunately, but it’s definitely his gang that was involved in this,” said a senior garda.

“They’ve been watched for quite some time. It wasn’t just a routine stop.”

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern praised the work of those involved.

“The minister congratulates the gardaí on a great day’s work in uncovering the drugs and rocket launchers. It was great detective work,” said the minister’s spokesman.

The first two of the four men in custody were arrested when a car was stopped on the Naas Road yesterday and a kilo (2.2lb) of cocaine, worth €70,000, was found. Two more men were arrested in a follow-up search operation in the Rathcoole area.

All four are being questioned in Clondalkin Garda Station.

Officers then raided the rented lock-up in an industrial estate in Longtown, on the main Clane to Straffan road, where they discovered the arsenal of weapons.

The Defence Forces said a bomb disposal team arrived at the industrial estate at 11.20am and declared the scene safe just before 3pm.

“We made the area safe and removed them from the scene. They will be destroyed,” added a spokesman.

Read more: http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/loaded-rocket-launchers-found-in-lock-up-457560.html#ixzz0npXW0cNu

... And people moan when the idea of Gardaì having tazers comes up. :rolleyes:

GalwayKiefer

Just heard about this and came on boards to see if there was a thread going about it. The availability of weapons in this country is getting increasingly out of hand but RPGs? Jesus Christ. If an all-out war breaks out between these gangs what else have they access to.

Zambia

Jesus H Christ , I honestly thought that was a wind up.

I would be more concerned at the weapons being used to remove the first responding Garda Vehicle to a Robbery, or the elimination of a informant on their way to court.

While this is a excellent result for the Gardai, its a very sad one for Irish society as a whole when people are prepared to import weapons of this nature into the country.

silverharp

Zambia232 wrote: »

its a very sad one for Irish society as a whole when people are prepared to import weapons of this nature into the country.

I wouldnt say it's sad, its a logical outcome of the nanny state approach to certain chemical substances no? didnt Prohibition multiply the power of the mob in the US?

MagicSean

silverharp wrote: »

I wouldnt say it's sad, its a logical outcome of the nanny state approach to certain chemical substances no? didnt Prohibition multiply the power of the mob in the US?

So we should legalise coke to save the hassle? Ever seen someone on coke go into a rage? Pretty destructive.

At the moment it's believed these weapons were not going to be used on Gardaí but on other gangs. So I suppose we are fortunate that Gardaí are still considered untouchable by most people. If Gardaí become legitimate targets to these gangs then the country is in trouble.

Zambia

silverharp wrote: »

I wouldnt say it's sad, its a logical outcome of the nanny state approach to certain chemical substances no? didnt Prohibition multiply the power of the mob in the US?

Has Ireland got so bad that some doodlesnoop imports some rocket launchers and there is someone out there willing to believe its the goverment's fault?

silverharp

Zambia232 wrote: »

Has Ireland got so bad that some doodlesnoop imports some rocket launchers and there is someone out there willing to believe its the goverment's fault?

the proximate case is that some scroat is to blame for sure but lets be honest here if drugs were not illegal there would not be drugs gangs and there would be less guns on our street. There have been plenty of reputable pieces done about the failure of the "war on drugs"

Morpheus

I wouldnt say it's sad, its a logical outcome of the nanny state approach to certain chemical substances no? didnt Prohibition multiply the power of the mob in the US?

:rolleyes: THIS i cant believe Ive just read as a response to criminal gangs importing heavy weapons... so the headshops shut, big deal. Should we legalise hash, coke, heroine? where do we draw the line? Also, where exactly do you think the drugs gangs will dissappear to?

Never mind blowing a CIT van open (and incinerating its contents) lets be more tactical and realistic here.

2 RPG-22's would remove (i.e. vaporize) the army vehicles and the soldiers in them who are travelling as security for a CIT van.

an RPG 22 can penetrate 400mm or armour, thats 40cm thick armour. No serious training is really required to use them, its point and fire, nuf said.

Its time to sort this sh*t out.

Zambia

silverharp wrote: »

the proximate case is that some scroat is to blame for sure but lets be honest here if drugs were not illegal there would not be drugs gangs and there would be less guns on our street. There have been plenty of reputable pieces done about the failure of the "war on drugs"

So should the state give in to all substance and articles that banning would create a illegal trade in?

I agree the drug war is a mess but if you removed the drug trade via legalisation these guys would move on to some other illegal activity and utilise these weapons for that purpose.

We are not OT yet but this road leads no other direction.

the_syco

silverharp wrote: »

the proximate case is that some scroat is to blame for sure but lets be honest here if drugs were not illegal there would not be drugs gangs

Will we legalize the RIRA whilst we're at it? :rolleyes: Themselves, the CIRA and the UVF used RPG's in the north not so long ago. There's not much difference between them using RPGs, and gangs using RPGs.

=-=

In Amsterdam cocaine, LSD, heroin, etc are banned. Can you tell me a country where cocaine is legal? Apart from Mexico where half a gram is legal, I can't really think of anywhere else. Thus there'll always be a drugs trade.

silverharp

Morphéus wrote: »

:rolleyes: THIS i cant believe Ive just read as a response to criminal gangs importing heavy weapons... so the headshops shut, big deal. Should we legalise hash, coke, heroine? where do we draw the line? Also, where exactly do you think the drugs gangs will dissappear to?

I've no wish to see criminal gangs get bigger weapons. However from my own standpoint the war on drugs is a waste of police time and my taxes. I wouldnt pay a red cent (if I had the choice) for policing that doesnt not involve protection of property and agression from other people. Anti drug laws are no different to the prohabition from the 1930's and both have led to an increase in armed crime here and less resources being deployed against "real crimes".

Morpheus

You still havent stated, which drugs do you think SHOULD be legalised? Would you be happy to have people snorting lines of coke in the bar and shooting up beside you? If you dont legalise them ALL you still have to police the remainder.

People on Coke cause trouble for the police. People on heroin rob from people and business to feed their habit. How will legalising drugs solve these problems? Other than earning more tax, which will need to be increasingly spent on policing to combat the problems caused by people using drugs.

You may notice the amount of problems caused by people drinking and how the police have to deal with this.

silverharp

Morphéus wrote: »

You still havent stated, which drugs do you think SHOULD be legalised? Would you be happy to have people snorting lines of coke in the bar and shooting up beside you? If you dont legalise them ALL you still have to police the remainder.

I dont think any should be illegal, a valium addict, heroin addict or alcoholic are treated radically different just because the chemical composition of their particular drug of choice.
Its a different issue surely where one can shoot up etc. I'd expect a drunk to be thrown out of a cinema and I dont think the issue here is being offended by someone taking drugs, its the consequences of criminalising an activity that has allowed criminals to build up funds worth hundreds of millions which no doubt go back into other criminal activities. Meanwhile the cost to the state is billions in police , court and prison time. Its simply not worth it not to mention the fact that people are drawn into the legal system that may not have otherwise

So should the state give in to all substance and articles that banning would create a illegal trade in?

if there is no initial crime like trafficing, counterfeiting etc. then I think the state should be very wary of being a "nanny".

Will we legalize the RIRA whilst we're at it? Themselves, the CIRA and the UVF used RPG's in the north not so long ago. There's not much difference between them using RPGs, and gangs using RPGs.

Err no. I think its pretty obvious that terrorists are a danger to person and property.

the_syco

silverharp wrote: »

Err no. I think its pretty obvious that terrorists are a danger to person and property.

Add cocaine and alcohol and you get violent ássholes who think they are invincible. There'd be a lot more violence on the streets. Look at Amsterdam: lots of people go there to get stoned. Now imagine lots of people coming to Ireland to do cocaine. And then think of how many would become violent.

Better to leave them illegal. Some class C drugs, sure, maybe, but not the class A drugs.

silverharp

the_syco wrote: »

Add cocaine and alcohol and you get violent ássholes who think they are invincible. There'd be a lot more violence on the streets. Look at Amsterdam: lots of people go there to get stoned. Now imagine lots of people coming to Ireland to do cocaine. And then think of how many would become violent.

Better to leave them illegal. Some class C drugs, sure, maybe, but not the class A drugs.

there are ways and means, I'm not suggesting they be made available from the local supermarket. you could make the the drugs available via a regestered addict scheme. As far as I can see, anyone that wants drugs here can get them but the profits are going to gangs who will shock horror import weapons along the way.
Ireland isnt even the worst example, places like Mexico are becoming politically unstable due to the "war on drugs"

silverharp

silverharp wrote: »

Ireland isnt even the worst example, places like Mexico are becoming politically unstable due to the "war on drugs"

Mexico is a completely different kettle of fish to Ireland. That situation is caused by the battle to control the supply of drugs into the largest market in the world, the US.

the_syco

silverharp wrote: »

there are ways and means, I'm not suggesting they be made available from the local supermarket.

You are, however, saying that they should be given out.

silverharp wrote: »

you could make the the drugs available via a regestered addict scheme.

Sorry, but this is class A bo||ox. Heroine isn't given to heroine addicts, so why should cocaine be?

silverharp wrote: »

As far as I can see, anyone that wants drugs here can get them but the profits are going to gangs who will shock horror import weapons along the way.

As far as I can see, anyone that wants RPGs here can get them but the profits are going to gangs who will shock horror import drugs along the way. What's your point?

silverharp wrote: »

Ireland isnt even the worst example, places like Mexico are becoming politically unstable due to the "war on drugs"

And here's me thinking that they legalized them in Mexico so that the local police could stop giving a crap about the small time users, and concentrate on the big fish.

silverharp

the_syco wrote: »

You are, however, saying that they should be given out.

absolutely , it shouldnt be anyones business what chemicals a consenting adult puts in their bodies.

the_syco

silverharp wrote: »

absolutely , it shouldnt be anyones business what chemicals a consenting adult puts in their bodies.

So I should be allowed to injest anthrax in the middle of a packed train?

Shield

Alright lads, back on topic please..

silverharp

the_syco wrote: »

So I should be allowed to injest anthrax in the middle of a packed train?

oh dear!


anyway, here is an article from the Economist. makes for a good read. At one point they say legalisation is "least worst" solution

Failed states and failed policies

How to stop the drug wars
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution
Mar 5th 2009 | From The Economist print edition

Illustration by Noma BarA HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.

That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.

Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

The evidence of failure
Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.

Nowadays the drug warriors claim to seize close to half of all the cocaine that is produced. The street price in the United States does seem to have risen, and the purity seems to have fallen, over the past year. But it is not clear that drug demand drops when prices rise. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption. At best, effective repression merely forces it to shift production sites. Thus opium has moved from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban.

Al Capone, but on a global scale

Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.

The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and “harm reduction” (such as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the punishment of consumers of “soft” drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organised crime out of the picture.

Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.

Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.

What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.

By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.

A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago (see article). Reviewing the evidence again (see article), prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.

Hooch

Ye have been directed back on topic already.....

Any more posts will be infracted.....Back on Topic