Spoof policing roster is an ‘angry response’ from frontline gardai

A SPOOF garda roster notice, which has been passed around stations in Dublin, is poking fun at one of the holy cows of garda management’s policing initiatives — the so-called community policing schemes.

The joke roster pokes fun at the claims by management about the ‘community police’ (known as ‘Compol’) role in offering what is officially termed: “a proactive, solution-based and community-driven form of policing”.

It is believed to have been posted in response to directions recently that although regular, shift-working gardai are to have their rosters changed, the community police are to continue on with their daytime duties which many other gardai regard as “gimmick” policing.

The ‘Community Policing’ programme was started in the 1990s in order to portray a more “people-friendly” form of policing.

The spoof roster comes at a time when there is anger among rank-and-file gardai about roster changes.

Sick days and absenteeism is set to soar among 8,000 frontline gardai as a result of proposed “deeply anti-family” rostering arrangements, angry rank-and-file officers have warned.

Speaking to the Sunday Independent, officers claimed they have been abandoned by their own association.

Outdated eight-hour rosters are being replaced with 10-hour shifts that will give officers more days off, but members say the new structures will leave many younger officers unable to meet their family commitments.

“Many guards are married to other guards or nurses who also work shift work. Based on the new proposed roster, some weeks I won’t see my kids at all,” said one garda.

The spoof version of the community police gardai’s supposedly typical roster is less than complimentary. It reads:

First week: Two days “Rest” (day off); “half day due to near exhaustion from effort of previous four hours”; “indoor soccer and tea with local scrotes”; “buckshee day off”; and “wash car and fill with petrol and also check Compol car”.

Second week: “chat with the lads”; “half day”; “half day”; four days’ “rest”.

Third week: “meeting and finish early”; “Basketball and log off on mobile phone from home”; “watch mid-week soccer on Sky TV”; followed by two more rest days; “stick in a couple of summonses and give regular unit a dig out for 20 minutes then go sick”; “pretend to be interested in local problems”.

Fourth week: “Tell working sergeant that you are not available for meetings due to urgent meeting and then fanny around for three hours”; “another buckshee day off”; “be seen at local community event and pretend to give a s**t”; “withdraw summons as set out above”; followed by two more rest days; and “whinge about how regular unit always pick on members of Compol unit and go home early”.