Gardaí in firing line

March 2002

THE need for extra gardaí for Arklow was underlined once again at the weekend when the local police had to call in reinforcements from a neighbouring town to help deal with another weekend night of street violence.

Gardaí from Wicklow had to come to the aid of their Arklow colleagues after they found themselves overstretched and undermanned to deal with a rash of street skirmishes along the entire length of Main Street in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The weekend’s rows were not an isolated incident, and gardaí blamed drink and drugs.

A garda spokesperson confirmed that incidents of residting arrest and assaults on gardaí have all increased.

‘Any weekend night in Arklow you have up tp 1,500 people emerging onto th estreet from different premises with drink on them and while the vast majority of them are law-abiding and most involved in rows are actually victims, there is a small hard-core of people who go out to cause trouble,’ he said.

‘We want to be able to expand out policing service in Arklow, we want to become involved in community policing, but how can we provide that type and level of service when all of our scarce resources are going on mopping up street rows at weekends?’ the source said.

Inspector Peter Finn said: ‘It is a reasonable assumption that the longer the pub premises remain open, the more drink that will be consumed and the more problems that we will encounter on the streets.’

Now Fine Gael TD, Billy Timmins, who revealed that drugs, with a street value of €1,700 had been seized so far this year, is calling on the Government to provide more gardaí for Arklow in a bid to combat the escalating drug problem in the town.

‘ The only way to combat this problem is to put more gardaí on the beat in Arklow. If we put the measures in place now, we will protect the nature of our young people and we could also be saving lives.’

Indeed the local police believe that the lack of garda manpower to patrol the streets, allied with the drink consumed, may be the two things giving the hard-core of trouble makers the courage to engage in the almost weekly street disturbances in Arklow.

Last weekend two people had to be taken to Loughlinstown hospital by ambulance for treatment of their injuries in one of the rows which occurred over a two-hour period starting at 12.30 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Garda sources revealed that another man was seriously assaulted in another row after 2 a.m. at Main Street.