Darndale Sunbather in a Vegetative state

they only just arrived in the country and this happens

some people live very unfortunate lives

This reminds me of an incident when I was in college, a couple of German erasmus students rented an apartment in Herberton Apartments (formerly known as Fatima Mansions) and were stabbed to death by some scumbag kids a few weeks later when they answered the door, for the 'crime' of not letting the assholes in to drink cans.

Reminds me of this one because, just like Herberton and as awful and admittedly snobbish-sounding as this is, with the state of the justice system in this country Darndale is one of those places I just wouldn't take the risk of hanging around in. Not because I believe the majority in those places are assholes - I know for a fact and personal experience that they aren't - but because in this country, the minority who are, are guaranteed to be free individuals and not safely behind bars, under house arrest, or otherwise physically locked up like they should be.

Of course foreigners who come to Ireland have no way of knowing this, and it would be totally un-PC to put up signs saying "NOTICE: Because of our utterly spineless judiciary, criminals known to be operating in this area do so with impunity. Proceed with caution." in areas with known anti-social behaviour issues - issues which could be gone a long way towards solving within weeks if the individuals responsible were no longer free to walk the streets as they wished.

I honestly always get more of a horrible sympathy-pang when I read these stories and it's foreigners or tourists who've been injured or killed by scumbags in scumbaggery blackspot areas, because at least as an Irish person one has a reasonable chance of knowing which parks, streets, buildings etc are dangerous no-go areas. A foreigner comes along to a place like this (Darndale Park on Google Street view) and they're just going to think "oh look, a nice patch of green open space on a beautiful summer's day! Let's head in there and chill out for a bit". Your average Dubliner is going to say "A bit of open green space in Darndale... Yeah that's probably not a good idea, maybe let's not do that."

And again, I am not casting any aspersions on the average citizenry of Darndale. This is not a class or social housing bashing issue. This is about the fact that in every community you get a minority of psychopathic types who don't give a f*ck about anyone else and have no problem hurting others (or even find hurting or hassling others to be great craic), but in Ireland, we simply let those people be and don't intervene to prevent them from acting on their violent or disruptive tendencies. My own local area would be regarded as a 'posh' suburb, but it does have several areas which are simply known by local people as being dangerous and unsafe to walk or hang out in, because they are known to be frequented by dangerous individuals. And that's all well and good, until some poor foreigner enters the equation and can't see anything beyond "well this looks like a nice bit of public green space - and there's hardly anyone here, we have it to ourselves! Jackpot!"

As a country, we really should be more ashamed that we don't deal with this. A civilised country shouldn't have any "no-go areas", FFS.

Surely there's a law about criminal negligence or something that would cover this. I can understand that there could be a loophole in that they can't charge someone with using the bike in the park (and that should be cleaned up) but surely there's an existing law about hitting someone in the head with one.

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Grayson wrote: »

Surely there's a law about criminal negligence or something that would cover this. I can understand that there could be a loophole in that they can't charge someone with using the bike in the park (and that should be cleaned up) but surely there's an existing law about hitting someone in the head with one.

Personally I think a charge of manslaughter would be appropriate. It's shocking that no charge has been leveled at the biker.

I see this all the time in D1. Guys racing around with no helmets. Gaurds seem powerless to stop it. I know Darndale Park a little and while it is better than it used to be it is not a place I would bring my kids.

Captain Flaps wrote: »

This was a daily occurance in Tolka Valley park when I was living in Finglas and the guards basically told me to stop reporting it because there was nothing they could do and 'if we chase them it'll just get more dangerous'. As far as I'm concerned the blame for this lies first with the scumbag on the bike, but the Gardai are a surprisingly close second.

I have to disagree with this, and regulars here will know that I'm the last person to defend AGS when they're accused of corruption or wrongdoing, but honestly ths blame for this lies at the doorstep of the judiciary, not the Gardai. It's not the Gardai's fault when they spend a few weeks or months surveilling low level scumbag criminals, build a case, collect evidence, prepare a file for the DPP and then show up to court to actually give evidence in person - and the judge says "broken home, addiction problems, bad crowd, turning his life around... Meh suspended sentence. Off you go now - and don't do it again!"

That must be so horribly demoralising when you're a good police officer genuinely trying to make your community a better place and you find yourself arresting the exact same f*ckers week after week, dragging them to court, and having a judge let them go. Ireland needs more jails and harsher mandatory sentences for violent behaviour. The Gardai honestly seem to be trying their best within the existing framework - but when that framework is "no matter what action we take, once it gets to court the whole attempt to deal with the situation dies", it's got to be hard to motivate yourself to show up for work every day and see nothing come of it.

Honestly, my analogy for the work the Gardai do in places like Darndale is, imagine if you worked for a company where your own job was to type out and print long, complicated reports every week - and your week ended, without fail, in delibering the file to your boss, watching him or her literally shred it and toss it in the bin without even reading it, and then having him or her say "good job this week! Enjoy the weekend, see you Monday".

That's what the Gardai are dealing with when they have to put up with judges who refuse to punish criminals after the Gardai manage to convict. We're not talking innocent until proven guilty here, we're talking people who have literally been found guilty in court, and are still allowed to walk out of the court and immediately resume their scumbaggery.

Love/Hate, fictional though it was, did a good job of explaining that in the series in which brain-damaged Tommy ratted out the lads for their tiger kidnapping antics - there's a conversation in which the lawyer says "sure we're grand, the case won't be heard for a year or two and we'll build a nice sympathy story in the meantime. Worst case scenario, Fran might end up doing a year or so and the rest of you will be grand."

Ireland needs to get past the idea that there aren't some genuine bad apples out there who need to be forcibly segregated from the law abiding population by means of a long (years long) jail sentence. There are, unfortunately, some people with whom the only way to stop them doing violent things is to physically prevent them from doing so.

Unfortunately this is an incident that even the locals will tell you was seen coming, The park has been full of people on scramblers ,quads and horses for years

I was up watching a soccer match early one Sunday morning and there was numerous bikes zipping across the pitch when the ball is at the other end,
 It's nothing new and its not unfair to single out  Darndale, its happing in loads of parks around the city , Bikes quads and young lads on horses,

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

I see this all the time in D1. Guys racing around with no helmets. Gaurds seem powerless to stop it. I know Darndale Park a little and while it is better than it used to be it is not a place I would bring my kids.

Gardaí can stop it. How do these scumbags get to the park? They drive on public roads. Guarantee the gardai know where 90% of these "bikers" live. A road near me in Finglas has scumbags driving scramblers up the road about 3 times a day, usually no helmet, numberplate, breaking red lights, up on footpaths.
Unfortunately it was an Armenian roofer and his foreign wife that had their lives ruined. Nothing will be done. If it was a Judges son, a TD's son, Joe Duffys cousin or some one important from the right part of town there'd be police checkpoints, bylaw changes, raids, CCTV, garda bike units, online investigations set up all within the week. But no, same old shíte, little scumbags on their bikes will continue.

Youtube is full of videos of scumbags like this btw. Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMAhD9_Shuc

Cienciano wrote: »

Youtube is full of videos of scumbags like this btw. Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMAhD9_Shuc

I mean, this isn't hard. Watch the video for 2 minutes, and you can establish that they came from <snip>.

Granted, that was 3 years ago so no use now, but keep an eye out for a few channels and the Gardai could nail these knackbags within hours. Take the bikes, destroy them, job done.

jon1981 wrote: »

Chances of them being taxed and insured? Insurers should hike the insurance on these... make it completely inaccessible.

Should be easy for the Gardai then to take the bikes away.

Taxed and insured :D

Good one.

jon1981 wrote: »

This is the thing, even paddy power wouldn't give you odds on these things being insured or taxed. It would be a pretty easy "campaign" for the Gardai to run here, spend a week targeting these people, even if there are no criminal charges, the will have at least made the location safer to live in by removing more of these things from the streets.

Sure they aren't even road legal, never mind tax and insurance.