High profile policing shouldnÕt be just on Bank Holidays

Date Published: {J}

It’s another Bank Holiday weekend so we can probably assume that there will be a special emphasis on Garda checkpoints around the country, while we will have warnings of the need to wear seatbelts and to stop making calls on hand-held mobiles while driving.

There was another such initiative recently in and around St Patrick’s Day – in the case of Galway City, the reports that followed days later indicated that 1,000 cans of alcohol had been seized and that 37 were arrested for drink-related public order offences.

All commendable work indeed . . . but my query is why such initiatives seem to take a special precedence at certain times, or when there are a few free days for the general public?

For instance, do such high-profile policing initiatives indicate that there is not the same level of law enforcement by the Gardaí during ‘ordinary times’. Or is it just that we see a more ‘in your face’ policing, allied to a public relations blitz, which lets us know what is happening, though the level of enforcement on the ground is at an appropriate level at all times.

Surely it has to be one or the other.

I have seen what looks like remarkable levels of policing on special occasions, and, by golly, the saturation tactics do seem to work. Or, is it that I get the impression that they work because I see Gardaí on the streets ‘in your face’ and there are constant media warnings of increased activity. In other words, is it a case of once you start looking for VW Beetles, you seem to notice more of them?

For instance, on the afternoon of St Patrick’s Day, there was a rather fancy looking mobile Garda policing unit, complete with built-in cameras and special communications equipment stationed near the Spanish Arch – the nexus of drinking in public on occasions such as the National Holiday.

It was high-profile policing and it seemed to work. My question is whether such policing in the city centre in the early hours of the ‘ordinary’ morning, when the atmosphere can be quite menacing, would succeed in making Galway a safer place; and whether a public relations initiative backed by ‘Gardaí on the ground’ would make life easier for all of us much more of the time?

For more read this week's Galway City Tribune.