This time last year I wrote about the demise community policing in Ireland. I was critical of senior garda management and I suggested that politics was influencing decision making in An Garda Siochana which was not good for policing. This article was published online and it received over 55,000 hits.
I’ve mentioned it here before that, following that publication, I was advised by some of my ex colleagues, that a few senior officers were suggesting that I should be careful about what I was saying or I could find myself in the High Court. Others had apparently suggested that I should be treated as a persona non- grata because I had betrayed the Force. I had broken the code of silence.
I wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire with my piece and it hardly qualified as breaking news. I didn’t reveal anything that wasn’t already known but the response from those officers is indicative of the kind of attitude that exists in An Garda Siochana. It did makme me to wonder about the treatment being meted out to the likes of Maurice McCabe, Dave Taylor and others.
If I was being slapped down for my small outburst, what were whistleblowers having to deal with? Then I began to wonder about how many more gardai have been advised to remember the omerta?
Well, the truth is we’ll probably never know because the people who want to highlight issues have no belief in the system that was designed to listen to them. Until that changes, those who would like to speak out will, instead, continue to bite their tongues.
There was a poll taken recently of middle-ranking officers and it found that almost three-quarters of them have no faith in the system for handing over confidential information. 71% said they had no confidence in the system for making protected disclosures and 91% said they either didn’t know enough about the procedures or didn’t have any faith in them.
According to Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors president, Antoinette Cunningham, her association was never consulted in relation to a protected disclosures charter in An Garda Síochána. She said it was sad that while the Government has decided to establish a high level working group, they have left out the very people that are involved in the process on ground level.
Antoinette shouldn’t be surprised by this because garda management has a poor record when it comes to consulting with the troops on the ground. But maybe she is worrying unnecessarily though because Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has said that it will take time for gardaí to feel confident acting as whistleblowers but the Government is working on increasing trust in the force, after the alleged treatment of Sergeant Maurice McCabe.
“It’s important that there are procedures in place that whistleblowers can trust,” said Minister Fitzgerald.
She has said that an independent review of the “wider and more fundamental issues of public concern” in the gardaí will be carried out with the appointment of the independent expert, who will have a track record in bringing about reforms in police forces in other jurisdictions.
So, we will have another expert to carry out another examination to write another report and put it alongside the others from the Garda Inspectorate, the Policing Authority and GSOC.
Professor Robert Bloom of Boston College, recently completed a research fellowship at the Trinity Long Room Hub in collaboration with the School of Law, and he has spoken about the external agencies moving the Garda Síochána to change its culture and break the ‘blue wall of silence,’ the blind allegiance to each other that exists in a police force. He is particularly interested in the closed culture which leads members of the Garda Síochána and other police forces to isolate whistle-blowers and hide wrongdoing.
A law professor for over 35 years, Professor Bloom teaches criminal procedure at Boston College Law School. His study of criminal procedure has led him to focus closely on the police. “The ‘blue wall of silence’ also exists in Ireland,” says Professor Bloom.
He has commented that it has always been a truism that progression within the force was dependent on two factors: Patronage and “team spirit”. Patronage simply means having someone of higher rank within the job or pre-eminence within a political party who can vouch for a candidate when they apply for promotion.
He is right of course but how do we change it? Those currently serving in management positions in An Garda Siochana have been trained, promoted and contaminated by this very system that is in need of change. The majority of these people are good, competent operators who are performing to the best of their ability. There are others, less capable, who have reached their positions through the culture of ‘pull’ and ‘cronyism’ that exists within the Force.
All of them have one thing in common, they are all part of the same system. This is no fault of theirs because it is the only system available to them, one that encourages a code of silence. A system that will consign you to the back benches if you are of a mind to speak up for yourself and not one to blindly follow the party line.
Nepotism is flourishing in An Garda Siochana and political affiliations are very important too. Interviews are held as a matter of course for various positions but these are often completely irrelevant as far as picking the most suitable candidate is concerned. The ‘chosen ones’ will have been selected well in advance of any interview process.
This is the way it is. Changing the entire culture of an organisation that has operated in this way since 1922 is going to take a lot more than banal utterances from the Minister for Justice.