www.communityvoice.ie - All the top news stories from Dublin 15

Public meeting discusses community policing

Over 100 representatives of local community groups and residents’ associations from all parts of Dublin 15 attended a public meeting in Tyrrelstown this week to meet senior officers and community gardaí from Blanchardstown Garda Station.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the workings of the local community policing service and to examine ways of improving it and forging greater links between local people and gardaí.

Opening the meeting, Chief Superintendent John Twomey said, “I realise we can’t police the community without your support. I’m the first to accept that we don’t always get it right but we are hell-bent to do something about it. We would hope to learn some lessons from tonight’s meeting.”

The Dublin 15 area is divided into seven community policing districts and the attendance was divided up into these areas and together with their local community gardaí they were asked to address four questions. These related to attitudes to community policing, how it affects people, working together and improving the service.

The general response of those present was that the service was a good one but there were some problems. One recurring theme was the difficulty of communications. A number of people spoke of the problem of getting a response when ringing the station. As one speaker put it “in this modern age one would think that there would be answering machines and e-mail facilities in the Garda Station.”

Other speakers called for greater resourcing for the service. “These gardaí should be given adequate funding for the job” said one.

The visibility of the community gardaí was seen as key to success of the service. The consensus of most of those at the meeting was that having a visible presence in areas was a major deterrent to anti-social activity.

One speaker called for greater co-operation between local residents and gardaí. “If we let people know that the community and the gardaí are working together that will send out a very clear message to those who cause trouble. It lets them know that we will not be intimidated.”

The anti-social theme was also referred to by another speaker who said that when local people contacted the community gardaí particularly over anti-social issues they got a quicker response and a more successful outcome to the problem.

A number of speakers stressed that community gardaí should not be seen as being less important than other sections of the force. They should be regarded as a front line service and should not be removed from other duties when there was a shortfall in the number of gardaí available.

Responding to the various comments, Supt. John Hartnett accepted the need to improve communications with the Garda Station. “We are very conscious of the need to have a visible service and I can confirm that we never take community gardaí away from their work to perform other duties. We want to provide a quality service and I am very glad that this meeting is prepared to work with us on it,” he said.

Chief Superintendent Twomey also took up the criticisms of the communications system. “We have an e-mail service in the station and we will be extending that. The better the links we develop with the community, the better the service we can provide. Tonight is just the first step in that direction,” he stated.

He also promised that there would be a follow up. “We must see some concrete changes coming from this meeting such as improving our communications system. We are also committed to following up on this meeting and reporting back to the community with another meeting in a few months.”

Speaking to Community Voice after the meeting, Supt Hartnett expressed his satisfaction with the way the meeting had gone. “We currently have a full complement of 2 sergeants and 18 community gardaí in the unit,” he said “and we are hoping to build that to 3 sergeants and 24 gardaí. They do a good job but we are aware that it can be improved. Ultimately we need as much community involvement and support as possible. It’s about them helping us to help them.”

Community Voice, Media House, Church Avenue, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15
Phone +353 1 822 1432 - Fax +353 1 640 4444
info@communityvoice.ie