Failings in garda roster leave communities missing a beat

I didn’t hear Cllr. Tony Fitzgerald speaking on Cork 96FM’s Opinion Line recently, but the programme subsequently quoted him on Twitter as suggesting he thought it was time to review the garda programme. ‘The new programme for gardai isn’t working and while there was always a good relationship with Superintendents who were active in the community, that doesn’t exist now.’

Tony Tweeted after the show that he didn’t see the point in community gardai working until 2.00 am. when schools and community centres were closed and suggested the preventative model of policing needed change. He said he was full of praise for gardai, and always was, but the roster wasn’t working.

Cllr Fitzgeralds point was that Models of best practice were developed in the ninety’s involving community, gardai & the department of justice which gave community gardai the flexibility to work their rosters accordingly to the needs of the community and family friendly policies. Huge gains were made.

He was challenged about this on Twitter by one person who suggested that gardaí were entitled to a work/family life balance, and the current roster facilitated that.  They said “Community policing involves more than just visiting schools and community centres. Much like every other aspect of policing, community policing is a 24/7 job. The need for community gardaí to be out and about doesn’t lessen once the sun goes down!”

I would argue that the need for gardai to be out and about doesn’t diminish once the sun goes down, but the need for community gardai to be out at that hour does. There is a difference. In my time, community policing was about dedicated sections of gardai engaging with the community, developing relationships with the various voluntary and statutory agencies, educating youngsters through the school’s programme and promoting community safety initiatives.

That business occurs during daylight hours when the other stakeholders are available, but that comment demonstrates how the distinction between community policing and policing the community, has become clouded. And it’s clouded because it suits the Government narrative. They would like us to believe that everything is fine, and nothing has changed, but it has.

I was responsible for community policing in Cork in the noughties, and in my time, policing the community was about patrolling the streets, investigating crimes and attending to calls that required garda attention. Community policing had a specific focus, but that role has been diluted largely because of the new roster. The lack of resources hasn’t helped either.

It was on the cards and in 2016, I made a few predictions. I can’t take any credit for them because it didn’t require any great wisdom on my part. It was obvious to all of us involved in community policing that the consequences of the “Modernisation and Renewal Programme” and the ‘New Roster’ aligned with the lack of resources were going to signal the demise of community engagement.

The introduction of the National Model of Community Policing in 2009 which was launched by M.F.Murphy, Commissioner could have saved the day. It was a blueprint for community policing that would have given it a stand-alone status if it had been implemented but the timing was bad.

The economic crash, an embargo on recruitment, manpower shortages and the introduction of the new roster system, meant the plan was doomed from the outset. Community policing officers were regularly taken from their duties to fill gaps elsewhere and as a consequence, they were less available to the community.

The ‘Modernisation and Renewal Programme 2016-2021’ as announced by the then Garda Commissioner, Noirin O’Sullivan, promised “to enhance our model of community policing to make communities safer, and address the policing challenges of each community. We will demonstrate our new policing ethos by engaging with the community through Community Policing Fora to determine their policing requirements.”

I predicted it wouldn’t work. It sounded great, but unfortunately the resources weren’t there to support it. To have any hope of succeeding, community gardai needed to operate outside the restraints of the new roster. I wasn’t the only person to hold that view.

The Garda Inspectorate agreed and pointed out that the introduction of the roster and constraints on resources led to a reduction in the number of dedicated Community Policing Units, particularly in rural areas. The Inspectorate recommended that the roster for community gardai should be tailored specifically for them. That didn’t happen.

In October 2017, I again argued that the closure of rural garda stations, new garda roster and the lack of garda manpower were having a negative impact on country living. Both the then Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and the Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald disagreed and persuaded the nation that rural Ireland was getting a better and more efficient policing service by closing country stations and redeploying those gardai to larger centres.

In reality, those relocated gardai were consumed by the workload demands in the already understaffed centres they had been transferred to and as a consequence, they were rarely seen in the locality again. If you need evidence of that, just ask residents to identify their local community garda or to indicate when they last saw a garda walking the beat.

A later report of the Garda Inspectorate confirmed that community policing was practically non-existent in Ireland as of December 2015, and they had concerns about the resourcing levels devoted to community policing duties. They also found significant reductions in the number of members assigned to community policing and found some divisions had no dedicated community policing units at all.

It confirmed what we already knew; the new roster was, and still is, unsuitable to community engagement. Cllr. Tony Fitzgerald is actively involved at ground level in his community and he’s saying the same thing all these years later, but still, nobody seems to be listening.