Everyone Stay Cool

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Thud. No wonder they were so happy.

Meanwhile…

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Noirin O’Sullivan scribbles at the top table as then Garda Commissioner Marftin Callinan labels Garda Whistleblowers John Wilson and Maurice McCabe as “disgusting” (starts at 3.56) during a public accounts committee meeting  last May.

Good times.

Previously: Ordure She Wrote

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41 thoughts on “Everyone Stay Cool

  1. donkey kong

    she was at the top table through-out the whole shit-storm. One of the boys ! disgraceful appointment.

    1. Mikeyfex

      Jungleman, won’t ya hurry, cos I’m tired of these scenes,
      For a blue coin, won’t you bring back, all those colours to my dreams…

  2. Bacchus

    Actually she’s been very solid since she took over as acting commissioner. The only reason not to appoint her would have been to appease morons on the internet. Tough. She’s probably the best person to turn the force around.

    1. Fairhill

      Absolute BS they should have brought someone in from a proper police force abroad, who could complete change the entire culture and make them more accountable and do a days work, instead of eating doughnuts

      1. Medium Sized C

        The Irony being that the Doughnut cliché comes from a foreign police force.
        You are naive if you believe that corruption is not endemic in every police force.

    2. Delacaravanio

      You really think someone outside wouldn’t have been better? The recent inspectorate report was scathing of the underfunding and corruption (outright lies in crime stats, etc), but what permeated it was how totally detached the Garda Siochana is to police in the rest of the developed world in terms of technology, attitudes and reporting. Appointing another insider who won’t rock the boat is not in the best interests of the public out the average guard who was abhorred by the corruption over penalty points and has to deal with a police force who has the technology and attitudes of the 1970’s. It’s a sad day for accountability.

      1. Bacchus

        You really think someone outside wouldn’t have been better?
        I do. Next time perhaps but the whole force needs a radical overhaul and it will take somebody known and trusted to do that. O’ Sullivan is a very credible person (despite the predictable cliches trotted out here) and we’re lucky to have her to oversee the changes. I don’t think she’s the same as the old guard at all – no pun intended.

        1. ollie

          bacchus, o’sullivan totally dismissed the latest report into penalty points. definitely the wrong appointment.

          1. Spartacus

            A cynic might say that it’s very much the right appointment from the point of view of a deeply unpopular cabinet facing choppy waters ahead. A friendly face heading up the police might be very, very handy in the coming weeks and months. Very handy indeed.

            Or so a cynic might say…

        2. delacaravanio

          But why would an insider carry out a root and branch reform? Just look at any organisation: outsiders change things.

        3. ahjayzis

          “it will take somebody known and trusted to do that”

          I strongly disagree. That’s the attitude I once took to Fine Gael – it’ll take someone as steeped in the bust system as Fianna Fail to fix it – nope.

          It needs a total bastard of a reformer who’s going to go in there and shake it to it’s foundations. Mass demotions, mass promotions, a total rebuild from the ground up. The guts to put to it to the government to properly fund the force with the ability to walk away if thwarted. The detachment to close Templemore and redesign Garda training – not an alumnus of the place.

          Appointing the underling of the disgraced former commissioner of a disgraced police force is not the actions of a government acting to fix it.

    3. ahjayzis

      “The only reason not to appoint her would have been to appease morons on the internet.”

      Unlike say the payroll sub-unit at the HSE, the Gardai depend on a public perception that things are run right and in the public interest – that they do their jobs and protect people. That perception is utterly, utterly broken by the reality we have a broken, ineffective, corrupt police force – it’s proven to be so.

      Public perception actually matters here, no matter how much you shrug it off as the ranting of the trolls.

  3. lawless Frilly Keane

    ‘Rather not comment on the appointment ’till I’ve a better clue who the other candidates on the shortlist were tbh.

    Anyone know who got a pfo this morning?

    1. scottser

      i roared laughing when i heard mick wallace applied for the post. like they’re going to make a convicted tax evader garda commissioner!!

  4. Brian S

    Wow. True reform. Ffs. Get someone from the met,gmp or at least someone with a track record of running or reforming a 21st century European police force.

    1. Kieran NYC

      Well Kathleen O’Toole (think that was her name) was brought in from Boston years ago. Didn’t seem to change much.

      1. delacaravanio

        O’Toole was in the inspectorate. The inspectorate, like the ombudsman commission, have been scathing of the way the garda has been run.

    2. cluster

      From the Met? From the f***ing MET?

      Get on google there and move outside your insular bubble for five minutes – look for terms like ‘Tomlinson’, ‘kettling’, ‘News of the World’, ‘institutional racism’, ‘pay-offs’, ‘PIE’ etc. If there’s a model out there for where we want to go with the Guards, it is most certainly not the Met.

  5. ahjayzis

    Another wasted opportunity. Bye-bye any hope of a decently run, honest, effective police force.

    I have to hand it to this disgrace of a government, they somehow still manage to surprise me at how completely unambitious and negligent they can be.

    Rotten, bent little country, and firmly staying that way.

  6. Miko

    Was anyone stupid enough to think it would go outside an Irish Candidate? Seriously?
    The Gardai are our state security service – unlike other forces such as the PSNI and Police in the UK who have M15 to do this, the US which have the FBI, France who have the DSG etc etc. The only realistic non Gardai candidates would be UK police as we have similar investigation and justice systems. Does anyone honestly think we could ever have appointed someone who swore an oath of loyalty to the Queen of England could be the person responsible for State Security? Really? (Unless of course you weren’t keen on the idea of state security in the first place)

    The only alternative is to decouple state security from the Gardai. As ever the next failure of the Irish Commentariat is to think that you couldn’t make things worse. You could – a small (in the Irish context it would be very small) state security agency would be both ineffective and potentially more dangerous then leaving it in the Gardai whose scale will offer some brake to the sorts of activities state security agencies get into. (Unless of course you weren’t keen on the idea of state security in the first place)

    Finally I know this is the country of gross hyperbole where EVERYTHING in this country is a quadrillion times worse then (insert failed state here) but, you know, the scandals we’ve had in the Gardai pale into insignificance against pretty much any other western police force let alone the rest of the world. Whether it’s Paedophile rings run by the Belgian police (to a senior level), Irish People sent down for decades by the British Cops for the crime of being Irish, US cops shooting kids dead in the street, an ACTUAL rape in Paris special branch HQ etc etc etc the Gardai are probably the least worst in the western world by a distance. Penalty points, Bailey and even McBrearty and Donegal pale compared to this. Name a police force with less scandal! I’d be really interested. I’m not saying change is not needed but there is as usual in this country a complete absence of any perspective in this country. I mean, bock the robber claiming the Gardai were THE WORST in Europe. I’d nearly buy him a ticket to Moscow and see how he gets on with the local cops.

    The Gardai’s formative period was during the troubles – that has led to the culture we have now with a lot of the dysfunction that created. It will take some time to change that culture (not just at the top) but I’ve more confidence in the new commissioner doing this then any of tax dodging, penalty points evading, semtex transporting TD’s making such a big deal about undermining the Gardai for their own agenda.

    1. CousinJack

      ‘the scandals we’ve had in the Gardai pale into insignificance against pretty much any other western police force let alone the rest of the world’

      that is total BS, almost none of the police forces you mention are as opaque and unaccountable as the gardai and very few have the laughable ‘discretion’ and political interference.
      Also the gardai have colluded with the church and public authorities in the operation and cover up of priest sex abuse, children home, organised crime, and terrorism. Its hard to think of another police force which has this history of shame.

      1. cluster

        All the examples you gave there (& more) can be applied to the Met, CousinJack.

        The truth is that you have no idea how opaque or unaccountable or otherwise the Belgian police or French police are and you haven’t actually addressed any if Miko’s points.

      2. Miko

        @cousinjack – You addressed none of my points and examples, or indeed the substantive point I was making…. instead of showing me this alternative police force with less or even equal scandal you instead make unsubstantiated claims. Again, I challenge you to show me this nirvana police force!

        Otherwise accept the fact that a police service is drawn from the society is was borne of with the best and the worst of that society. A lot of the “ills” of the Gardai are simply a reflection on Irish Society. Are we really surprised in a country built on special cases and exceptions (witness the current discretionary Medical Card row whereas in other countries they just, you know, have rules) that people were getting penalty points knocked off because of their “exceptional” situation. Shocked that in a inward looking society which looked the other way COLLECTIVELY during previous decades at child abuse that SOME Gardai might look the other way, or more likely as many people of the time were, simply act in denial that such a thing could arise. In a time when asking too many questions would have you posted to a ditch in Leitrim on border duty by some politico (duly elected by the People).

        As an aside – read this article from the times: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/swiss-are-coming-to-terms-with-the-legacy-of-contract-children-seized-from-single-mothers-1.2001608 to see that shockingly, we are not near the worst or even the last.

        Again, as I said it’s about having perspective generally on the world and Ireland.

    2. delacaravanio

      You list a whole series of straw men. We don’t live in Belgium during the mid-1990s, or London during the 1980s, we live in Ireland, in 2014. Just because your neighbour used to rape and beat his wife doesn’t make you husband of the year because you don’t.

      1. Miko

        You actually built a strawman there yourself. Donegal was primarily the eighties. McBrearty was the nineties. Does that make those cases OK because they were the olden times? No? One of my examples was from this year. And I never stated that because another police force did X it was OK for the Gardaí to do X. That’s just being really dishonest. It seems you have one rule for the Gardaí (all bad) and a different rule for other police forces (that was long ago).

        Your other untruth was to suggest I said all was good with the Gardaí. What I clearly said was that comparatively speaking the Gardaí have had less serious scandals then any other police force I can reasonably think of. I’ve asked people to point out this spotless police force and noticeably nobody is biting. Therefore in this context of the Gardaí being a reasonably well run and lawful organisation, we can have a reasonable conversation about how to improve this force, continuously get rid of the bad apples you get in any 11k employee organisation (because you know, bad apples will always get back in) and introduce increased accountability to the force. Not the nonsense above.

        1. delacaravanio

          I’m building a straw man? The fact that you can’t even recognise an example to explain your foolish reasoning made me despair, but upon reading your second paragraph, which is entirely constructed on something I didn’t even say, I now realise that you don’t do logic, and I was wasting my time trying to make sense of your scatterbrained musings.

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