Our Garda stations are closing...

arybvtcw0eolkf

The following stations will be closed permanently;

Rush, Whitehall, Dalkey and Harcourt Terrace.

And the following will have restricted opening hours;

Cabinteely, Stepaside, Kill O’ the Grange, Sundrive, Terenure, Cabra, Malahide, Santry, Howth, and Donnybrook.

These stations are currently open to the public on a 24-hour basis and will, in future, be closed to the public between 10.00pm and 8.00am.

Whats the forums views on this..

Personally it leaves me a little concerned for both myself, my family and the wider community.

When seconds count - minutes matter.

In a capital city of over a million people this is pure madness.

I'm not scared, however I am concerned and feeling a little less comfortable without the protection of AGS 24/7 - Tell if, do scum knock off when your local station closes at 10pm?.

TheVoodoo

Completly agree! But the reduced hours stations will still have guards in them available, and the patrols will still be going on.

It's my understanding that the reason for reducing hours it means that One less Sgt. and 2 regular guards are required to 'man' the station.

arybvtcw0eolkf

TheVoodoo wrote: »

Completly agree! But the reduced hours stations will still have guards in them available, and the patrols will still be going on.

It's my understanding that the reason for reducing hours it means that One less Sgt. and 2 regular guards are required to 'man' the station.

That being the case, what happens when the cells in Finglas and Blanch stations are full and the Cabra car has a prisoner?.

I'm guessing it takes that car further out of the area - and as I said, when seconds count minutes matter.

Cardinal Richelieu

Rush station was more or less closed most of the time anyway except for a couple hours a day otherwise you ended up speaking to someone in Balbriggan on the intercom beside the station door. Besides the closure of Rush Station, very often the Skerries, Lusk, Rush areas are lightly patrolled late at night with most resources wasted on dealing with drunks and fights pubs/nightclubs while the real pro criminals pick that time for break ins around the area. The real scum come out from the city at the weekend rob a house or two then nick a car for a ride back into the city. Happening that way for years, we will just see more now that the Garda presence is visibily less.

TheVoodoo

Mario Unimportant Barter wrote: »

That being the case, what happens when the cells in Finglas and Blanch stations are full and the Cabra car has a prisoner?.

I'm guessing it takes that car further out of the area - and as I said, when seconds count minutes matter.

Yup, that will pull that car further away to a more central station.
It does make sense in some areas ( like mine ) whereby I'm inbetween Dun Laoghaire, Blackrock Kill O the grange and Cabinteely.. but is ridiclous in other areas.

D

I'm currently living in Finglas and had to call the station twice once when I heard a group of men trying to force their way into a house and second when I saw a van pull up and start lifting bicycles from kids who were playing on the green (i got all the reg details and a good look at him).
In the latter case I got through straight away but with the former it was at night and couldn't get through so I rang 112 it still took them about 12 minutes to get two guards in a squad car to come over to check the place and by that time the guys had gone.

The force in finglas must be stretched thin as it is.

I hope that when the stations do close that the guards from there are still on patrol in that area.

Chucky the tree

It's not like the station closes at 10pm and everyone then knocks off and goes home. They will still be open it's just joe soap won't be able to call in and have his passport application signed.

starviewadams

I'd imagine if you ring a station that's closed at 10pm your call will either be automatically re-directed to the next nearest station or to command and control,no way the call will go unanswered.

Think they're doing to this as a way to get more Gardai out on the street in order to make up for the ban on recruitment and members retiring.

cson

Jaysus that Whitehall station was 24hrs iirc. Gone like that :eek:

gurramok

Surprised at Sundrive, ain't that a very busy station? Hope these closures\restrictions will not result in a rise in vigilantism.

ArtSmart

buildings make little difference.

it's pretty rare one crawls to a police stn at night, to collapse on the floor, muttering 'they got me, right in the gut'. (and if you did, it's too late!)

efficiency has little to do with having small buildings everywhere.

Mario Unimportant Barter

Mario Unimportant Barter wrote: »

The following stations will be closed permanently;

Rush, Whitehall, Dalkey and Harcourt Terrace.

And the following will have restricted opening hours;

Cabinteely, Stepaside, Kill O’ the Grange, Sundrive, Terenure, Cabra, Malahide, Santry, Howth, and Donnybrook.

These stations are currently open to the public on a 24-hour basis and will, in future, be closed to the public between 10.00pm and 8.00am.

Whats the forums views on this..

Personally it leaves me a little concerned for both myself, my family and the wider community.

When seconds count - minutes matter.

In a capital city of over a million people this is pure madness.

I'm not scared, however I am concerned and feeling a little less comfortable without the protection of AGS 24/7 - Tell if, do scum knock off when your local station closes at 10pm?.

The only reason Donnybrook is there is to deal with kids coming out of wesley.

Blackrock covers Deansgrange, Dun laoghaire covers Dalkey and Shankhill, Blackrock and Dun laoghaire cover Cabinteely.

Obv would prefer if they didnt close/ reduce hours but I cant see those particular stations closing causing the public much concern.

Stepaside stands out as one that shouldnt have been targeted.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Viviana Slow Velcro wrote: »

The only reason Donnybrook is there is to deal with kids coming out of wesley..

And nothing else?.

delta_bravo

Its a small county with a good road network. Before this cuts we had 47 stations (not all 24hrs).

Compared to other places around the country, Dublin is well served by stations. Unfortunately, these things have to be targeted as there are so many stations compared to other places in Ireland.

Gavin "shels"

gurramok wrote: »

Surprised at Sundrive, ain't that a very busy station? Hope these closures\restrictions will not result in a rise in vigilantism.

Busy but I suppose you have Crumlin and Kevin St close by.

Degsy

gurramok wrote: »

Hope these closures\restrictions will not result in a rise in vigilantism.

I hope they do...

CyberJuice

Degsy wrote: »

I hope they do...

Sign me up

John Mason

tbh, if they closed Finglas, i am pretty sure no-one would notice.

I prefer to phone Cabra instead.

Sofa King Great

Viviana Slow Velcro wrote: »

The only reason Donnybrook is there is to deal with kids coming out of wesley.

Blackrock covers Deansgrange, Dun laoghaire covers Dalkey and Shankhill, Blackrock and Dun laoghaire cover Cabinteely.

Obv would prefer if they didnt close/ reduce hours but I cant see those particular stations closing causing the public much concern.

Stepaside stands out as one that shouldnt have been targeted.

Donnybrook also covers a large stretch of the N11, most of the embassies in Dublin, the RDS, Lansdowne Road, ballsbridge, ranelagh.

Stepaside also covers a wide area of the dublin mountains, a load of new developments, the british ambassadors residence, ballyogan etc

No1J

irishbird wrote: »

tbh, if they closed Finglas, i am pretty sure no-one would notice.

I prefer to phone Cabra instead.

You won't be able to call them after 10pm, they say that they will be able to cover the areas but the guys answering the phones in Blanchardstown and Finglas won't know the Cabra areas aswell.
It's a long haul to Dunard estate off Blackhorse ave from Blanch.
I'd say a lot of quick break ins, kick in the door and grab what you can and off are on the cards.
Every area has it's known trouble makers and the local station know them and where to find them, its going to take time for the new stations responsible to get up to speed on this.

shakeyben

I dunno, what I will say though is that Dalkey is a thriving village (if in the country a good sized town) which is completely independent of it's surrounding parishes. it is a heritage town with a thriving tourism industry attracting many visitors in addition to the already populous inhabitants. It may not have a huge crime rate although I could be wrong I would imagine there is rich pickings to attract many serious criminals. I would imagine that the footfall on Dalkey Garda Station is as high as most stations across Dublin aside from the city centre stations. In conclusion if Dalkey does not need a station then who does. A word of warning to the residents of Dalkey - if you don't have local Gardai who care then you get forgotten about, you become merely a statisitic in much larger region. Dun Laoghaire Garda Station has its own worries and I don't think Dalkey will be one of them

Tabnabs

Sofa King Great wrote: »

Donnybrook also covers a large stretch of the N11, most of the embassies in Dublin, the RDS, Lansdowne Road, ballsbridge, ranelagh.

Stepaside also covers a wide area of the dublin mountains, a load of new developments, the british ambassadors residence, ballyogan etc

He has two armed gards and one/two uniformed gards on duty 24/7. A mate of mines father is one of them, some funny stories when the local drunk takes a short cut through the grounds...

I have little fate in the gards anyway. We had a drunk driver smash his car into the tree outside our house last summer. The driver staggered off, can in hand, as I was ringing the gards and it took them three hours to come from a large south side station about 1 km away... These same gards hung up on a bordsie who rang to say his stolen car had been spotted, they had to ring 999 eventually to get any response. You'd be a fool to think AGS are there to keep you and your loved ones safe.

Turner

Tabnabs wrote: »

it took them three hours to come from a large south side station about 1 km away...

This has been done to death here.

Long response times are not the fault of the Gardai. It is down to the government and resources.

Calls are logged on a dispatch system whether you call the station or 999.

They are put into a queue and prioritised, as a car deals with a call and becomes free it is given another.

Sometimes the response time could be 1 minute others it could be 12+ hours depending on what is in the queue and how many cars are available.

Gardai don't choose what calls they go to, they are dispatched by their control room.


And boy is it going to get worse.....

Victor

Someone was saying that Toronto(?) only has three stations that stay open at night.

We can either have gardaí in stations or we can have them on the beat.

ProudDUB

I honestly don't see the point of having manned Garda stations in every single suburb. It seems like a useless waste of resources to me. I lived in an American city with a population 5 times that of Dublin. I had no clue where my local police station was. I never had any reason to go there. Passport applications are done at the post office. The police have nothing to do with it. Their being involved in the process here strikes me as terrible waste of manpower. The police should be out there patrolling the streets and in cars, going where they are needed, not sitting behind a desk acting as glorified secretaries. The one time I had to call the police in the US (when I suspected a neighbours apartment was being broken into) I dialed 911. A radio call was put out, the car that was closet to me at the time was dispatched and a cop was there in under 5 minutes. Would that happen if I called a station here, and they were too busy signing passport applications and dealing with town drunk to answer the phone?

dsmythy

Bet you the Dalkey decision is overturned......

dissed doc

Mario Unimportant Barter wrote: »

In a capital city of over a million people this is pure madness.

I'm not scared, however I am concerned and feeling a little less comfortable without the protection of AGS 24/7 - Tell if, do scum knock off when your local station closes at 10pm?.

Well people wanted public services cut, so they got it.

DublinWriter

...as a direct result of the Department of Justice/AGS having to directly foot the €40m bill for the recent visit of QEII. Blame Mary Mac for that if you like.

Station closure is always a political football. I can't really see it having much consequence in suburban area Dublin, however it can become an issue in rural areas when stations get closed in small towns (1k+ households) and the nearest station suddenly becomes the nearest District/Divisional HQ 15+ miles away.

gurramok

Turner wrote: »

This has been done to death here.

Long response times are not the fault of the Gardai. It is down to the government and resources.

Calls are logged on a dispatch system whether you call the station or 999.

They are put into a queue and prioritised, as a car deals with a call and becomes free it is given another.

Sometimes the response time could be 1 minute others it could be 12+ hours depending on what is in the queue and how many cars are available.

Gardai don't choose what calls they go to, they are dispatched by their control room.


And boy is it going to get worse.....

You very sure about this? Once upon a time when I lived in Finglas at the height of the joyriding mania in the late 90's, I myself along with countless neighbours phoned the Garda station for assistance on the problem of gangs joyriding in said cars around the estate and burning them when they ran out of petrol. About 10 hours later(it started about 12pm), the public order unit were sent, it was the first sign of Gardai about.

Given that it maybe down to a lack of policing resources in the Finglas district, this priority thing looks like a cop-out. By the way in later years, the Garda have been heavily patrolling the district on sensitive days like Paddys Day and Halloween, this is welcomed but if they had responded via the broken window theory in the first place there would be no need for riot police.

Now as i'm living in lovely D4, the Garda response is ahem very pronto to the littlest of emergencies. To me, that is class policing as its a total contradiction to when I had lived in Finglas. Well after all, most gardai do live in middle class districts of the capital and not among the 'slums' to see what goes on at their doorstep.

Kernel

gurramok wrote: »

You very sure about this? Once upon a time when I lived in Finglas at the height of the joyriding mania in the late 90's, I myself along with countless neighbours phoned the Garda station for assistance on the problem of gangs joyriding in said cars around the estate and burning them when they ran out of petrol. About 10 hours later(it started about 12pm), the public order unit were sent, it was the first sign of Gardai about.

Of course this is down to lack of resources. Gangs of drugged up criminals flying about the place in stolen cars - do you expect a lone beat copper or two to arrive with batons drawn and get themselves quickly hospitalised or worse? No, you have to wait for an appropriately equipped resource to be deployed. If you have more resources, they'll be deployed more quickly. it probably took a long time to scrounge up enough guards equipped with public order training and kit from stations all around Dublin. Again, lack of resources means a lack of training output.

gurramok wrote: »

Given that it maybe down to a lack of policing resources in the Finglas district, this priority thing looks like a cop-out. By the way in later years, the Garda have been heavily patrolling the district on sensitive days like Paddys Day and Halloween,

That just disproves your theory. The reason for the heavy patrolling at contentious times, simply means that a **** tonne of overtime was put out to increase the available resources (guards). If there was always that level of resources (more recruitment and spending by the government) then you would be able to have that level of heavy patrolling on a regular basis.

gurramok wrote: »

this is welcomed but if they had responded via the broken window theory in the first place there would be no need for riot police.

But Bratton's broken window hypothesis was only possible due to a huge increase in numbers and spending on the NYPD, as well as harsher sentencing by the judiciary, and making it easier for cops to process prisoners.

gurramok wrote: »

Now as i'm living in lovely D4, the Garda response is ahem very pronto to the littlest of emergencies. To me, that is class policing as its a total contradiction to when I had lived in Finglas. Well after all, most gardai do live in middle class districts of the capital and not among the 'slums' to see what goes on at their doorstep.

That's nonsense. Class policing? Did you ever stop to think that maybe the reason for such a slow response time in Finglas was because of the amount of criminality and anti-social behaviour going on there was simply stretching resources to the limit, whereas in a more affluent area, you have less of that kind of sh1te tying up resources?

Once again, every point here comes down to resources and money. As someone said, people were hoodwinked by FF and started crying out to cut public spending not so long ago. Well that's being done, and when you will have classroom sizes of 50 kids, old and sick people dying on trollies and a handful of guards patrolling the streets of your area and surrounding areas at night, then you will see the problem with cutting public expenditure.

donvito99

I See some sense in Harcourt Terrace, Rathmines is just down the road, and theres about a million detectives around the corner.

But Terenure? Big station, facility, traffic based from there etc etc. Woulda thought Rathmines would nearly have made more sense.

But then again, closing any station makes little sense.

Chucky the tree

donvito99 wrote: »

I See some sense in Harcourt Terrace, Rathmines is just down the road, and theres about a million detectives around the corner.

But Terenure? Big station, facility, traffic based from there etc etc. Woulda thought Rathmines would nearly have made more sense.

But then again, closing any station makes little sense.

Who would call into Terenure station after 10pm though?

paddyandy

Apathy towards law and Order ???

Victor

donvito99 wrote: »

I See some sense in Harcourt Terrace, Rathmines is just down the road, and theres about a million detectives around the corner.

But Terenure? Big station, facility, traffic based from there etc etc. Woulda thought Rathmines would nearly have made more sense.

But then again, closing any station makes little sense.

Harcourt Terrace covers as far as St. Stephen's Green, so it can be busy enough, but yes, it could be easily amalgamated with Harcourt Square.

Which do you think is busier at night - Terenure or Rathmines?

The Maverick

Victor wrote: »

Harcourt Terrace covers as far as St. Stephen's Green, so it can be busy enough, but yes, it could be easily amalgamated with Harcourt Square....

Harcourt Square is not a public Garda station, it's more of an office complex for various detective units. There's no cells or public office, the uniformed Garda at the front gate is as close as you get. It would be up to Pearse Street and maybe Kevin Street to take up the slack when Harcourt Terrace is gone.