Chief Supt warned things would get worse before they get better

THE past week has been a shocking and disturbing one. The vicious murder of teenager Keane Mulready-Woods and the subsequent disposal of his remains in two places in Dublin and the shooting of taxi driver John Myles, simply doing his job out and about on the streets of Drogheda.

The subsequent reaction has been damning. The murder of the Beechwood Drive boy attracted headlines all over the world.

But if you had sat in the Governor’s House in Millmount at a meeting two years ago, last week would have come as a shock......but not a surprise.

It was a Joint Policing meeting and Chief Supt Christy Mangan (right) made a detailed statement. Many of the words he used last week, he used that night. He could see the storm coming, but who listened.

One thing rang so true, ‘ this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better...’

In front of a TD, senator and councillors, he laid the bare facts on the table - take action now on the drug trade or ‘we face losing a generation’ in this town.

He told how he was going to work one morning and saw a couple of 11 and 12 year olds walking to school.

‘I know many of these young people will be involved in drugs in three to four years time. We have 12 to 14 year olds involved in this, doing the evil deeds for them (drug dealers).’

He told of the litany of crimes that began with a shooting on the Cement Road in July 2018 and spread into October, November and December, a catalogue of arson attacks, pipe bombs, false imprisonment, assaults and intimidation of families

‘At one stage we had five crime sites in the same night, we were running out of guards,’ he revealed.

€270,000 was seized in bundles and had to be hand counted while €32,000 worth of cocaine was also found.

‘We can take on what we have to do, but it’s a social problem too, it’s social services, it’s the council. We have to look at this in a detailed way. There are issues in this town that need to be sorted out.’

He said the gardai were always the ‘fall back organisation’ and were left to ‘clean up the mess at 3 or 4am in the morning.’

‘In another 10 years we’ll still be dealing with it unless we do something. A lot of organisations that could help are poorly resourced,’ he added, stating that he had met the Red Door Project and was encouraged by their efforts.

He was critical of the cutbacks in the force in recent years, Drogheda well below what is needed to properly police the biggest town in the country. ‘If you have the right number of people, you patrol in places like Moneymore and you transfer fear of crime from the victim to the criminal. Drug dealing has been gathering momentum in this town for 20 years.’

He said it was time for the community to act now and the present ‘scenario’ needed to be used for the long term betterment of the town and its people.

So, when the name of Drogheda literally exploded last week and people began asking Christy Mangan what was the story, he must have taken it all with a surreal approach.

How many times do the gardai in this town have to say - proper resources, day after day, is the only way to fight this.

There was a lull in the ongoing drug war for some months around Christmas but that was down to the constant patrols by armed gardai who popped up literally everywhere at anytime. That presence prevented certain crimes from taking place.

The events of last week has seen national resources being afforded to gardai locally and the ongoing helicopter activity, night after night, is seen as gardai ‘ upping the game’.

While government ministers and garda chiefs give the orders and try to balance the books, sometimes in a war you give generals like Christy Mangan a free hand to get the job done. And he will, his way.