Should another Garda Commissioner resign?

BaronVon

Muahahaha wrote: »

Again I would also say that the majority of Gardai navigated the system and did their job to competently here. It is not the entire rank and file who are subject to investigation, only about 30% of them. It seems some Gardai did their job correctly and others did not.

I would argue that 30% of the total Garda force would be the vast majority of Gardaí who would be coming into contact with juvenile offenders. There are plenty of Guards in offices, specialised units, traffic units, detective units etc, who would very rarely deal with juvenile offenders. The vast majority of juvenile offenders would be dealt with by response and patrol units, i.e. the regular unit. So if you were to take that percentage as a percentage of regular units, I would expect it to be exceeding at least 70% of regular unit members.

Therefore, IMO, it would definitely be a systems failure. No doubt there were some individual failures too.

With regards the fact the crimes were marked as detected, in order to benefit from the JLO system, the juvenile has to admit the offence. If he admits the offence to the guard in the station, I think it's fair to say the offence was detected. If the investigating guard was then never notified that the juvenile was unsuitable for the JLO system, then he would not know that he needed to change the detection status of the case.

Muahahaha

Muahahaha wrote: »

Well when the investigation begins no doubt thats what some Gardai will be claiming. After all we already know that they were marking their cases as solved when clearly they were not.

bubbly as you've knowledge of this maybe you might explain the notification system in detail, a step plan of how it works would be good here. Because I am still not buying this as a systems failure when human error is flashing brightly. Both Feehily and Harris have said that individual members of the Gardai were not following up on their cases as they were supposed to do.



But the summary offences are the majority here so yes, there are thousands of victims of crime who will never see justice. Harris said this last Thursday and apologised to all of them as well as saying he is going to write letters of apology too. On the serious crimes who knows? Its been reported the passage of time has corrupted the chain of evidence. A good defence solicitor would have a field day with that in the courts, the chain of evidence has to be beyond rapproach.

When a member invrstigates a crime, & they identify a juvenile is an offender of that crime, then it is marked as a detected crime. Because it is.
they have solved the crime, as such.
That juvenile may or may not be included in the jlo system.
The way the system is now, which is different to before pulse, means that every single offender has to be considered for a caution.
Previously there was a system, where a juvenile was already identified as not suitable for the system.
Now, every single juvenile arested, has to be included for every single crime.
This has resulted in every single juvenile offender being referred for every single crime .
This has resulted in all JLO officers having a much larger workload.
By the time they go through all crimes by juveniles, there may be some crimes statue barred. & by the time individual Gardai are notified, there may be some crimes that are statue barred.
Any serious crimes, however, Will not be statute barred & those juveniles can still be charged.

Official notification comes through the channels, the jlo sends paperwork to the superintendent office, where it is recorded, it then goes to the sergeant, where it is recorded, then to the individual Garda.

blanch152

Muahahaha wrote: »

Harris said the numbers will change as it is a fliud investigation, but even if they halved we would still be talking of 4,000 odd cases that didnt get prosecuted due to Garda inaction

Muahahaha wrote: »

Its pretty shocking stuff that over 3,000 victims of crime have not got justice and nor will they ever due to the statute of limitations.

3,000 or 4,000, your number keeps changing.

At least your posts appear to have cleared up the issue that summary crimes, the ones that are statute barred, normally don't have victims and have dropped the victim references.

blanch152

Muahahaha wrote: »

Thats because to be honest it didnt deserve an answer blanch.I have never disputed the competency of Harris as leader of a police service, it was clear he had a successful career in the RUC/PSNI. What I did dispute was the fact there were 14 other candidates who applied for the job of Commissioner and had no doubt that that number contained people who were equally competent as Harris but who didnt carry the baggage from the Troubles & MI5 that Harris did.

I wasn't the only one to raise that point- the Crime & Security branch within the Gardai who are responsible for threats to the State raised it too as did articles in the media. No amount argument can negate the fact that Harris has a lifelong duty to keep MI5 intelligence secrets which include the who was responsible Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which murdered 33 Irish citizens and injured 300 more. It would take an extraordinary level of naievty to think that Harris does not know who planted those bombs, you would also have to cliaim that MI5 are incompetent too not to know. And no amount of argument can negate that his knowledge of those loyalist terrorists who planted the three bombs is a direct conflict of interest to his duty as Garda Commissioner. I said Harris taking the bull by the horns is to be commended but that doesnt mean that he wss the only person of that 15 candidate shortlist who could have done so, to suggest otherwise is illogical thinking.

In any case Harris is cleaning up the mess of O'Sullivan, someone who you have gone to great lenghts to defend on here before, even to the point of saying she did nothing wrong in the Templemore fraud scandal despite her hands being all over it. This latest scandal happened on her watch, she assumed the post of Commissioner in 2014 which was also the year the Garda Inspectorate raised the issue. But it took Harris to actually do anything about it. O'Sullivan was in situ three years and not a jot was said be her. Harris is in situ 5 months and he is tackling the problem head on. So how to you square that off with the performance of O'Sullivan now?

Your post betrays a complete misunderstanding of procedures around conflicts of interest.

A conflict of interest in relation to the Monaghan bombing (should one exist, we only have your theory to rely on, I don't accept there is necessarily as big a conflict of interest as you speculate) doesn't in any way prevent his appointment as Commissioner. It may prevent him being active on that investigation, if his knowledge is as you say it is (and is anything more than scuttlebutt and gossip) but you hardly want him to spend his time reading forensic reports from 40 years ago, do you?

Conflicts of interest have to be declared, no more. I have made statements to the Gardai in relation to a number of crimes over the last few decades. Some of them remain unresolved. Does that mean that my knowledge of those crimes, and who I believe perpetrated them prevents me from ever being Garda Commissioner? There are lots of other reasons why I won't be Garda Commissioner but information on crimes isn't one.

Once a conflict of interest is declared, appropriate precautions around that particular issue, and only that issue, have to be taken. It doesn't affect anything else a public servant does.