We are becoming increasingly accustomed to a new level of violence, it seems, mostly because the frequency of non-gang related murders seems to have dulled public reaction to news of yet another killing or violent assault. But still: to be told after another spate of horrific killings that Dublin is ‘safe’ must feel to many people like gaslighting.
The capital is now widely perceived as being a much more dangerous city than before, something a visit to the city centre will more than likely confirm. Dublin as Marie Louise O’Donnell previously wrote here, doesn’t have a capital energy as much as “the energy of violence, abuse, accosting, street toileting, begging, loitering, disrespect, and the constant threat of an attacking kick off and a possible thump in the mouth, if you react as though you notice.”
“We pretend that we can walk close to the river on the walkways. We cannot. It is a drug infused threat and a sleeping area,” she added.
But whatever about the general air of feral thuggery that pollutes the atmosphere in much of the city centre while increasingly encroaching on the suburbs, some of the violence being meted out in recent attacks is startling, if not downright terrifying.
Sometimes the sheer depravity of the violence is horrifying, such as the case of a man who was left with such catastrophic injuries to his face after attackers smashed an e-scooter into his face as he lay unconscious on the ground that Gardaí had to appeal for assistance in identifying him by pointing to a tattoo on the inside of his right forearm, featuring the words ‘Ceol is Beatha’.
The number of such ultra-violent attacks seems to be increasing as does the perception that much of what is dismissed as ‘anti-social behaviour’ is frequently tipping into vicious rather than petty crime.
Yesterday we learned that Alex Coughlan, a young man who died after being violently assaulted in an unprovoked assault in Blanchardstown, had been left “prone, injured and bloodied” by his two alleged attackers, one who referred to him as “prey”. The cruelty meted out is unfathomable. That teenagers were involved makes one despair.
And the violence continues, seemingly endless. This morning it was reported that a death that had gone almost unnoticed in media reporting had occurred when 31-year old Thomas Griffin jumped into the river Liffey on Saturday night “to get away from an attacker who had stabbed him”.
The following night – or rather, in the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday another attack took place which left another young man dead on Clarendon Street, just off what many consider to be the capital’s premier shopping area, Grafton Street. It was another stabbing, or rather a series of attack as he was “hunted down” through the streets. Qayyum Balogun, who was born in Nigeria but grew up in Dundalk.
From the Irish Mirror: “Sources told us the victim, named locally as student Qayyum Balogun, was targeted twice in the horror incident — and was stabbed three times.”
It’s understood investigators believe the first attack did not cause any injury that could have contributed to the death of the 21-year-old – and the fatal wounds were inflicted after he was chased down and stabbed again.
We have established that he was stabbed in the arm in the initial attack on Grafton Street – before being pursued onto nearby Clarendon Street, where he was attacked again, this time with fatal consequences.
The young student and nightclub promoter had been attending a rap gig at Bewley’s on Grafton Street, reports say. The gig was listed as the Shallipopi Official After Party with Famous Pluto Performing Live. Both artists referenced are Nigerian. It’s reported that a row broke out at the gig between two groups and that Mr Balogun sought to flee the violence but was followed outside and stabbed.
The victim is said not to have any involvement in criminality and was described as “an innocent soul”. Another young woman who had no connection to either group in the melee was also stabbed – an additional innocent bystander paying the price for socialising in what feels like an increasingly violent city.
What we do know is that a large group of people were involved in the horrendous violence on the night – and that Gardaí now say a “key person of interest” to them in the murder investigation is “well -known to gardaí” and is currently being charged for another stabbing in the south of the country.
In the wake of all this violence and deadly mayhem, RTÉ sought the opinion of a Fianna Fáil councillor, Rory Hogan, who said that while assaults do have “profound impacts” on the public, that Dublin was becoming a “much safer city than what it was a number of years ago”.
The reaction online was furious, perhaps best summed up as ‘Another day, another murder and we are mean to think Dublin is safe’. It had echoes of the public anger that met the ill-advised ‘walkabout’ by then Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, in the wake of spate of violent incidents in the city, which was described as a “cynical PR exercise”. People don’t like to feel that they are being taken for fools.
SO IS DUBLIN SAFE?
In fairness to Cllr Hogan, he was asked for his honest opinion and he was pointing to an increase in high-visibility policing which is hoped will help to bring down crime rates. But in relation to crime statistics in Dublin, my colleague Gary Kavanagh comprehensively reviewed, in his usual meticulous fashion, the data and the trend in a piece that is well worth revisiting at this time.
He found that digging into the data showed a different picture to the the headline figures. There were “sharp increases in some of the most visible and civically damaging categories of criminal behaviour – assaults, drug possession, drug dealing, sexual offences, rape, fraud, street level harassment, and shop theft, amongst others.”
In the “Attempts/threats to murder, assaults, harassments and related offences” category, for example, he noted that recorded incidents of that category increased by 131% between 2003 and 2024. “That rise encompasses a wide range of violent or threatening incidents, as is obvious from its name, and reflects a broader deterioration in the categories of crime that most affect everyday public life. In 2024, Garda data for the Dublin Metropolitan Region recorded over 8,500 incidents within this category – in 2003 that figure was 3,685.”
And looking at the period from 2008 to 2024, he noted that while Public Order offences had dropped more than 44%, there was a remarkable variance in the different categories of crimes. While liquor licensing offences dropped by 98% and drink-driving was down 64%, other categories exploded.
Threats to kill or cause serious harm are up 2,429%.
Assault causing harm is up 72.5%.
Blackmail or extortion is up 1,842%.
Driving under the influence of drugs has increased 1,820%.
Organisation of crime and conspiracy is up 290%.
Harassment has more than doubled.
Theft from shops is up over 70%.
“And many of these increases are precisely the kinds of crimes that shape public perceptions of safety: street-level harassment, threats, assaults, intimidation, and theft in open retail settings – which usually leads to additional security measures in shops and a visible reminder to citizens that crime is an everyday issue,” Gary wrote.
In other words, people are not fooled when they can see the evidence of their own eyes. And they are not reassured by talk of Dublin being ‘safe’ when innocent people are being attacked and beaten to death, or hunted through the streets and stabbed. Instead of reassurance, it feels like gaslighting. And instead of the denials, we need an honest evaluation of what is driving crime and lawlessness in our capital city – and we need to rid public discourse of the pretence that this government is hard on crime.