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Child Item

Garda wiped driving slate for two judges and RTE presenter

Death and Taxes

TWO judges, a leading rugby player and a television presenter were among those who had penalty points illegally written off, a garda whistleblower has alleged.
In at least nine cases highlighted in the dossier, a motorist who had their points quashed went on to be involved in a fatal road-traffic accident.

A source told the Irish Independent: "What the material suggests is that this is a cultural issue within the force – something that has become custom and practice over the years, but is only now coming to light."

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/garda-wiped-driving-slate-for-two-judges-and-rte-presenter-3309822.html

If this is true, and I for one suspect that it is, it just shows that culture of endemic corruption in the Gardai remains unabated!

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Solair

If the tickets were appealed correctly, then surely there's some kind of paper trail that can be used to show the decision making process?

Could some evidence (perhaps with names and regs etc deleted) be provided to the Dail showing how this process works?

An appeals process can be done transparently!!

Something like :

Mrs X was driving to Town Y on the 32 of June 2002 at 12:75pm
She was issued with a fixed penalty notice for exceeding the speed limit of 80km/h and was driving at 120km/h at .... on the R99999
Mrs X wrote to us, providing evidence that she was on her way to hospital with her friend who was suffering from chest pains. A note from the hospital is included in this file.
It was therefore decided to waive these points, due to the extenuating circumstances.

.....

Something like that one file for every quashed penalty point notice would solve the issue and I don't think anyone would have any issue with it. It's simple and transparent.

Perhaps have a situation where those files are subject to normal audits and you've no issues whatsoever or any perception of potential unfairness.

MagicSean

WileyCoyote wrote: »

With respect Sean, 90,000+ cases and they were all emergencies? That is not credible. The idea that a judge was rushing someone in need of urgent medical attention on the same stretch of road, two days in a row is laughable.

I'm not suggesting they were all emergencies. There's a multitude of reasons. If your wife drives through a speed trap in your car you get the ticket. If you identify her as the driver she gets a ticket and yours is cancelled. I could throw out examples of legitimate reasons all day. Ive encountered quite a few. Gardai have a power of discretion for the reason that not all things are black and white.

A while back there was a story of a guy who was clamped while rushing his daughter into the GP. Everyone was full of hatered for this vile clamper because he wouldn't release the clamp. Now let's say he wasn't clamped but got a ticket. Would it still be wrong to cancel the ticket? I don't want to get stuck on the medical emergency examples because they are in the minority. I'm just trying to show how things aren't always as right or wrong as they first seem.

kippy

The major issue here is the fact that this has only come to light as a result of a whistle blower who is aware only of these few cases.
How many more cases involving the "average" citizen and a member of the Gardai they may know who has access to waive these points/fines are out there as well?
In my opinion this is only the tip of the iceberg. This practise may be widespread for all we know. If you know the right person you may be able to avoid the points etc.

Biggins

kippy wrote: »

The major issue here is the fact that this has only come to light as a result of a whistle blower who is aware only of these few cases...

Few cases?
I think the whistle-blower supplied a print-off list of 50,000 cases.

MagicSean

kippy wrote: »

The major issue here is the fact that this has only come to light as a result of a whistle blower who is aware only of these few cases.
How many more cases involving the "average" citizen and a member of the Gardai they may know who has access to waive these points/fines are out there as well?
In my opinion this is only the tip of the iceberg. This practise may be widespread for all we know. If you know the right person you may be able to avoid the points etc.

I think this is more like the bottom of the iceberg in that the information released was every single cancellation for whatever reason. As the legitimate cases are removed it will get narrower until it gets to the top where the dangerous part is.

kippy

Biggins wrote: »

Few cases?
I think the whistle-blower supplied a print-off list of 50,000 cases.

Sorry, picked this up wrong.
Fair enough, that's more like it.

Solair

The one positive I would note is that Ireland does now have a robust Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. So, perhaps that's the best way of investigating it.

If this doesn't already happen, I would hope that the GSOC can review Garda procedures from a one-step-removed position and make recommendations to correct any issues.

Sometimes large organisations can't actually see flaws in a system as that becomes 'how it's done' and it takes an outside agency / individual to point out the issues.

Again, that's all about transparency and having multiple checks and balances on organisations / people who have power.

It prevents corruption of the system, but also ensures that the system gets bugs ironed out of it too.

Where this is done well, systems are designed from the ground up with the idea that they have to be transparent at their very core.

Ad hoc systems without any kind of audit trail tend to be where you end up with messy, 'grey area', stuff that can cause big problems.

Biggins

kippy wrote: »

Sorry, picked this up wrong.
Fair enough, that's more like it.

No worries.

There will be genuine cases - the real problem is the underlying culture of underhandedness, of unfairness.
As long as that culture is continuously systemic and been seem oft times to be 'acceptable' ("Aaa... sure its happening all the time!") then the problem of corruption in general will extend itself over other areas as many will see that they can get away with such behaviour with little or no risk.

Biggins

Solair wrote: »

The one positive I would note is that Ireland does now have a robust Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. So, perhaps that's the best way of investigating it.

Can we really trust Gardi to investigate their own and whats more tell later then, the full truth of the inner corruption and name the culprits?

For myself, I'm honestly unsure.

Solair

Biggins wrote: »

Can we really trust Gardi to investigate their own and whats more tell later then, the full truth of the inner corruption and name the culprits?

For myself, I'm honestly unsure.

Well, that's what the GSOC was created for. It's totally independent of the Gardaí and has significant powers to investigate them.

See info below:
http://www.gardaombudsman.ie/gsoc-garda-ombudsman-about-us.htm

Oregano_State

MagicSean wrote: »

I'm not suggesting they were all emergencies. There's a multitude of reasons. If your wife drives through a speed trap in your car you get the ticket. If you identify her as the driver she gets a ticket and yours is cancelled. I could throw out examples of legitimate reasons all day. Ive encountered quite a few. Gardai have a power of discretion for the reason that not all things are black and white.

A while back there was a story of a guy who was clamped while rushing his daughter into the GP. Everyone was full of hatered for this vile clamper because he wouldn't release the clamp. Now let's say he wasn't clamped but got a ticket. Would it still be wrong to cancel the ticket? I don't want to get stuck on the medical emergency examples because they are in the minority. I'm just trying to show how things aren't always as right or wrong as they first seem.

From watching the segment on Prime Time last night, the total number of fixed penalty notices (for speeding I think) since their introduction in 2002 was a bit over 900,000. The number of cases called into question here is in teh region of 90,000. That's about 10% of cases, which is much too high to be put down to special cases and exceptions.

Biggins

Solair wrote: »

Well, that's what the GSOC was created for. It's totally independent of the Gardaí and has significant powers to investigate them.

See info below:
http://www.gardaombudsman.ie/gsoc-garda-ombudsman-about-us.htm

We can only live in hope then that for once, they get/give clear transparent answers.
The previous record of Ireland bodies doing this so far does not bode well for the future.

...However, we can hope...

MagicSean

Solair wrote: »

Well, that's what the GSOC was created for. It's totally independent of the Gardaí and has significant powers to investigate them.

See info below:
http://www.gardaombudsman.ie/gsoc-garda-ombudsman-about-us.htm

I have a feeling this may not come within their remit.

Oregano_State wrote: »

much too high to be put down to special cases and exceptions.

What are you basing this on?

Oregano_State

MagicSean wrote: »

I have a feeling this may not come within their remit.

What are you basing this on?

Common sense.

MagicSean

Oregano_State wrote: »

Common sense.

i suggest you go to a district court some day and compare the percentages.

Oregano_State

MagicSean wrote: »

i suggest you go to a district court some day and compare the percentages.

The courts haven't been involved in this. That's part of the problem.

MagicSean

Oregano_State wrote: »

The courts haven't been involved in this. That's part of the problem.

Bit of a circular argument there. You said the percentage is too high. You based it on your "common sense". I suggested you compare the percentage to the amount of people who get let off in the district court. Do you have any response to that particular point to support your theory that the percentage is too high?

Oregano_State

MagicSean wrote: »

Bit of a circular argument there. You said the percentage is too high. You based it on your "common sense". I suggested you compare the percentage to the amount of people who get let off in the district court. Do you have any response to that particular point to support your theory that the percentage is too high?

These are cases where the garda database has been amended by Gardai at their discretion, and where the legal precedent for doing so is very thin, almost non-existent.

From what I recall of the Prime Time segent on it, the legislation specifically mentions 'exceptional' cases only, like medical emergencies, or where the vehicle in question is under the direction of a garda or following a garda vehicle.

Takling all of this into account, 10% seems to me to be much too high a figure for speeding cases to fall into these categories, and therefore it is legitimate news that thsi has happened, and needs to be investigated further.

Comparing speeding cases, which have a low number of variables, to the vast range of cases that can appear in district courts seems a very strange comparison. I don't think that they should correlate at all.

MagicSean

Oregano_State wrote: »

These are cases where the garda database has been amended by Gardai at their discretion, and where the legal precedent for doing so is very thin, almost non-existent.

From what I recall of the Prime Time segent on it, the legislation specifically mentions 'exceptional' cases only, like medical emergencies, or where the vehicle in question is under the direction of a garda or following a garda vehicle.

I believe that legislation you refer to is an exemption from the road traffic acts and a defence to a prosecution. As I already mentioned, the legislation on fixed charge penalties makes it clear that a fixed charge is a precursor to a prosecution so a legal defence is not necessary.

As I also previously mentioned there are many other reasons why a fixed charge might be cancelled that have nothing to do with justifying the behaviour. Cloned reg, wrong driver, incorrect registration, sold on car. This is especially so in the case of automated speed traps when the car is not stopped and these details are not confirmed before the ticket is issued.

Oregano_State wrote: »

Takling all of this into account, 10% seems to me to be much too high a figure for speeding cases to fall into these categories, and therefore it is legitimate news that thsi has happened, and needs to be investigated further.

This is the problem with releasing a vague figure of 90,000 cancellations in 8 years. How many of these were reissued with different details? An inccorrect reg entered, a wrong place name, wrong offence code.

I was once in a public office when i guy came in and laughed at the Garda and said "You gave me a ticket with the wrong reg number" The Garda cancelled the ticket and reissued it with the right one. That particular ticket will be amongst those 90,000 along with many others like it.

Oregano_State wrote: »

Comparing speeding cases, which have a low number of variables, to the vast range of cases that can appear in district courts seems a very strange comparison. I don't think that they should correlate at all.

I'm talking about speeding cases. In one district court yesterday only two out of six of the speeding cases were not thrown out.

It's likely that some of the cancellations will turn out to be dodgy but if it's any more than a small percentage I'll be very surprised. The majority of fixed charge penalties are issued by Traffic Corps and they have a certain reputation that would not be congruent with doing favours.

mikom

http://blog.farelogix.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/CircleTheWagons.jpeg

jonsnow

WileyCoyote wrote: »

Sargent Marta "Fists" McEnrey, also remains a member.

Looks like she on the way out though.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/garda-faces-dismissal-after-failed-assault-appeal-3262186.html

Wednesday October 17 2012
A FEMALE garda sergeant who lost her appeal against a conviction of assault is now facing dismissal from the force.

Martha McEnery, from Listowel, Co Kerry, had secured a High Court order preventing Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan from continuing with a process which could lead to sacking her, pending the outcome of her appeal against the conviction. But after her appeal was thrown out by the Court of Criminal Appeal, on Monday the process of dismissing her has now recommenced.

The commissioner will seek a written copy of the court's judgment before his final decision.

McEnery (43) has been suspended from the force for the past 33 months but has continued to receive 75pc of her pay.

Last November McEnery received a four-month suspended sentence for her part in an assault on Anthony Holness as he was being arrested in Waterford city in January 2010.

He would never keep her on after what she did would he?

Iwannahurl

Oregano_State wrote: »

From watching the segment on Prime Time last night, the total number of fixed penalty notices (for speeding I think) since their introduction in 2002 was a bit over 900,000. The number of cases called into question here is in teh region of 90,000. That's about 10% of cases, which is much too high to be put down to special cases and exceptions.

I'm not sure whether having Mick Wallace, Clare Daly and Luke Flanagan pursuing this in the Dail is at all helpful in terms of progressing the investigation.

They seem awfully exercised about it. Why them, and why this issue in particular?

From today's Irish Times:

TDs try to raise penalty points issue

Calls have been made for a public inquiry into allegations of corruption in the removal of penalty points from drivers’ licences.

Four TDs who attempted to raise the issue said gardaí who reported the claims were being “victimised”.

Independent TD Mick Wallace claimed that since January the Government had “ignored” reports by two gardaí that fixed-charge penalties were being “terminated”. But his attempt to raise the matter in the Dáil was ruled out of order. The Wexford TD said the gardaí went to the “Garda confidential recipient for whistleblowers but did not get any satisfaction or protection”. He said “honest gardaí are being undermined”. They “got a warning when one of them said to one of the gardaí: ‘I’ll tell you something. If Shatter thinks you’re screwing him, you’re finished.’ That is a disgrace.”

United Left Alliance TD Clare Daly also attempted to raise the issue and said honest gardaí were “being victimised because they have uncovered the systematic abuse of motoring charges and terminations to those of some very powerful and influential people in the State, including members of the judiciary”.

The Dublin North TD said “Judge Devins has been named in the newspapers as have sports figures and other officials, including gardaí”.

When Leas Cheann Comhairle Michael Kitt called on her to resume her seat Ms Daly said “we are talking about the loss of millions to the State”.

Her ULA colleague Joan Collins also attempted to raise the matter calling it a “national issue of corruption regarding penalty points”. When she too was ruled out of order the Dublin South Central TD described the situation as “outrageous”.

She added: “There are fixed-term notices and judges are giving down charges to people with penalty points and Mary Devins is named in this. It is outrageous.” When Independent TD Luke “Ming” Flanagan also attempted to raise the issue, the Leas Cheann Comhairle described the TDs’ attempts to raise it as “an orchestrated campaign” .

K-9

King of Kings wrote: »

this is just horsehit
i'm not saying it has never happened but it doesn't happen on a regular scale.

an awful lot of people sounding like drunks in a bar complaining that the world is in a terrible state of chassis

people just making up "all gardai/TDs/Judges are corrupt ****s" off the top of their heads

Good I never said all did it then. It does happen, there was a big controversy about it a few years ago with the Minister of Justice at the time squashing driver bans.

jonsnow

They take this stuff a little more seriously in some other jurisdictions.In the US similar cultures of quashing tickets have resulted in officers been indicted and charged, careers ruined and a police captain was even jailed for a year for running a parking ticket scam.In Ireland after a few questions in the dail, a few newspaper articles and internet threads and possibly a recommendation by the Garda Inspectorate which will be ignored nothing will change and the culture will continue

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_city_police_department/ticketfixing_scandal/index.html

Over the years, the practice of fixing traffic tickets has persisted in New York despite many headlines, court cases and the wrecked careers of law enforcement officers.

In 2011, the practice became part of a major multiprecinct investigation, the largest focused on ticket-fixing since the 1950s. The inquiry began when the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, in an unrelated investigation, taped an officer in mid-2009 trying to have a ticket fixed.

The scheme centers on union delegates and trustees. Officers wanting to make a ticket disappear — or following orders to do so — would seek out union officials who seemed plugged into a network for doing it safely.

The charges against the 16 police officers who were arraigned on Oct. 28, 2011, show that it was a highly organized, systematic practice citywide.

The charges, detailed in a huge stack of paper made up of nearly two dozen indictments with roughly 1,600 criminal counts, include hundreds of instances in which 10 of the officers allegedly fixed traffic tickets, several people with knowledge of the case said. Six other officers were accused of engaging in a wide variety of corruption crimes, the people said. The charges were unsealed Friday morning in State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

Many of the counts are misdemeanors, though all the officers, except for two, were charged with felonies, one of the people said.

Ten of the officers are officials in the union that represents police officers, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, and those officers essentially served as liaisons for fixing tickets, several people briefed on the case said. Also among those charged were two sergeants and a lieutenant.

The charges represent a blow to the union, and the case has already changed its culture of freewheeling favor trading, which many said grew from a kind of professional courtesy — one officer helping another — to fixing tickets for family, friends and more distant acquaintances.

The investigation has already begun to extend to Bronx trial courtrooms. It rolled into an attempted murder case in late May, and the following week touched drunken driving.

Any police officer swept up in the scandal is susceptible to being asked about the topic when showing up as a witness in unrelated cases. And if jurors cease to believe the words of police officers because they monkeyed with tickets, something many defense lawyers may hope occurs, then it is in these courtrooms that the most corrosive impact of the scandal may be felt.

The criminal inquiry took an unsettling turn when a 62-year old police officer who had recently testified before the grand jury touched the third rail of an elevated train track in the Bronx, apparently in a suicide attempt, an official and people who knew him said. To many, the episode was proof of the severe strain that the investigation had placed on some veteran officers, who could suddenly find their careers facing ruin and their reputations threatened.

Police Leaks

In late September 2011, a union official was captured on a wiretap telling a union colleague who was under scrutiny in the case that he had received a call from someone in the Internal Affairs Bureau, and that the caller had warned him that the investigators were on the way, the source said. The call came shortly after teams of investigators headed out toward the precincts.

The call was one of what investigators suspect was just one of roughly half a dozen instances during the three-year ticket inquiry in which officers believed to be assigned to Internal Affairs leaked information about the case to police union officials, all of them officers, who were under scrutiny.

The suspected leaks may be the most damning of the departmental weaknesses unearthed to date in the ticket-fixing investigation. The leak accusations seem to lend support to the argument, long put forward by many current and former prosecutors and police officials as well as academics, corruption experts and politicians, that the Police Department is incapable of policing itself.

Background

Ticket fixing has been around since police officers walked their beats. In 1951, officers in Manhattan’s 20th Precinct were investigated for sabotaging paperwork to kill traffic citations, as favors for politicians. In the middle of the inquiry, the ledger recording all the precinct’s summonses mysteriously disappeared.

Three years later, an inquiry uncovered 100 officers who had sidestepped the summons altogether: they sold $10 courtesy cards that motorists could flash and go free, according to the police and the Brooklyn district attorney.

Between those two scandals, reformers hatched what was thought to be an incorruptible solution: Gov. Thomas E. Dewey proposed redesigning the summons books that officers carry, with ticket slips consecutively numbered, each in quadruple form. A newspaper report called it “a system of non-fixable tickets.”

It didn’t quite work out that way.

In 1987, a veteran police officer, Robert Hanes, was dismissed from the force after a departmental trial found he had persuaded another officer to give false testimony that let a motorist evade a fine for speeding. In 1996, a federal judge sentenced William Caldwell, a former police captain and president of the Housing Police Superior Officers Association, to a year in jail for fixing thousands of parking tickets. His scheme often involved false paperwork claiming the cars had been stolen or were disabled at the time the ticket was issued.

In pleading guilty, Mr. Caldwell said, “Some of these things I did were for friends of mine, some were for profit.”

Iwannahurl

The view of some here seems to be if that some quashed penalty points is all we have to worry about in AGS then we're not doing so bad...

serfboard

On The Last Word yesterday, Matt Cooper asked the very reasonable question of Alan Shatter as to why the Garda Ombudsman isn't being brought into this. After all, a question mark has been raised about Garda behaviour - surely this should trigger automatic involvement of the Ombudsman?

The Minister's response was that they may be involved - but it sounded to me like he was talking on the hoof, and hadn't even considered it before he was asked.

seamus

Really the Garda Ombudsman's remit is to deal with complaints about the conduct of the Gardai.

First off it has to be established which of these 50,000 incidents were not valid. The vast majority of these quashings were likely completely above board, so it has to be identified which of them weren't.

Once you have reason to suspect individual members of misconduct, then you can get the ombudsman involved.

Going Forward

seamus wrote: »

Really the Garda Ombudsman's remit is to deal with complaints about the conduct of the Gardai.

First off it has to be established which of these 50,000 incidents were not valid. The vast majority of these quashings were likely completely above board, so it has to be identified which of them weren't.

Once you have reason to suspect individual members of misconduct, then you can get the ombudsman involved.

It is alleged that points have been rescinded from employees of the Garda Ombudsmans Office also.

That's my understanding of what Clare Daly said to Matt Cooper previously, Monday I believe, I am open to correction.

jonsnow

Going Forward wrote: »

It is alleged that points have been rescinded from employees of the Garda Ombudsmans Office also.

That's my understanding of what Clare Daly said to Matt Cooper previously, Monday I believe, I am open to correction.

Great.So now they have absolutely no moral authority to commence an investigation.

"if you're the police, who will police the police?"

"I dunno. Coast Guard?"

J K

jonsnow wrote: »

Great.So now they have absolutely no moral authority to commence an investigation.

"if you're the police, who will police the police?"

"I dunno. Coast Guard?"

Yes but were those points "rescinded" based on a legitimate appeal to a Garda Superintendent. Or based on a personal favor. It is yet to be shown that any one of these is the latter. The assumption that is being made is that overturned fines/points had no basis to be appealed. Has this been established yet. Or should this not be investigated first?