It should be patently obvious to anybody with a brain that there are vanishingly few potential innocent explanations for the story broken yesterday by Irish Times crime and security editor Conor Lally. The fact that a “criminal investigation” is now under way into the circumstances should make clear that the Gardai, at least, are not considering any innocent explanation:
“A pump-action shotgun seized by the Garda, and which should have been in secure storage as evidence, got back into the hands of people involved in serious organised crime. It was seized for a second time during another, separate, Garda operation targeting feuding criminal gangs.
It was only when the gun was seized for the second time that gardaí realised it was the same pump-action shotgun previously found during searches. A criminal investigation is now under way into how the gun found its way back into circulation in the criminal fraternity.”
If this investigation were simply a one-off, one might regard it as simply an unusual, if concerning development, and move on. But a member of AGS coming under a criminal investigation is not a one-off.
In November 2022, a former civilian employee of the Garda Siochána was jailed for passing secret garda pulse records to “an individual known to the Gardai”. In March of last year, the Journal reported an ongoing Garda investigation into whether information was provided by serving Gardai to members of a named criminal gang ahead of a gangland murder. A few weeks earlier, two Gardai – both detectives – were arrested as part of a probe into their connections with that same criminal gang. In 2018, Garda Jimell Henry was jailed for 18 months after being convicted for “passing confidential and sensitive information to members of a criminal gang in Sligo”.
Without reference as to the guilt or innocence of those members of AGS who still have investigations against them – it is a generally accepted principle that the proportion of people caught and convicted for a particular crime is generally much lower than the number of people who commit such crimes. While the data in the USA might be extreme relative to Ireland, it is nevertheless instructive: A 2018 report by the FBI suggested that if you commit murder in America, you have a nearly 40% chance of getting away with it, rising to 65% for rape, and almost 87% for burglary. Speaking personally, when my own car was stolen some years back, the Gardai were able to locate it in a few days – but nobody was ever arrested or charged with the crime. Many, many, criminals get away with it.
This principle would tend to suggest that the portion of crooked Gardai being identified by the forces’ internal affairs and anti-corruption division is only a portion – and perhaps only a small portion – of those members of the force engaged in corrupt activities. That is not to say that the efforts to prevent such corruption are either insincere or under-resourced. It is simply to say that the frequency of such incidents being uncovered suggests that many other such incidents are not being uncovered.
In this instance, for example, a pump-action shotgun – a highly dangerous weapon – has clearly been removed from secure Garda storage, for a period of time that has yet to be determined. Conor Lally’s report makes clear that Gardai only became aware that the weapon was missing when it was recovered as part of a separate investigation.
That fact alone suggests that Garda management of its secure evidence storage processes is questionable, at best.
This is, very clearly, a matter of grave public interest: If the Gardai are failing to keep dangerous weapons off the street, that’s an operational failure. If Gardai are failing to keep dangerous weapons that they’ve already seized off the street, then that goes well beyond failure and into the territory where it demands a political response. A garda passing information to a criminal gang is one thing – but any hint that Gardai are passing weapons to criminals is on another level altogether.
This brings me to another point: The unusually close relationship in Ireland between the Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner. This was highlighted last week when the Minister announced that she would not attend the AGM of the Garda Representative Association on the basis that she was showing solidarity with the Commissioner, who was not invited.
But the Minister has no business “showing solidarity” with the Commissioner: He works for her, and is answerable to her for the failings both of his leadership, and the organisation that he leads. He is answerable to her, not the other way around.
In this case, it is the job of the Government to bring the Gardai to heel, and to demand accountability for those within the organisation who have allowed weapons to be transferred from Garda storage to the hands of alleged criminals without the organisation apparently noticing. That alone should be a resigning matter for the commissioner. That it is not, to be frank, is astonishing.