THEY SEND HORRIBLE ABUSE TO OUR WIVES

Abuse

THE public order unit were abused from the start. They were called c***s, scumbags there was a guy speaking Spanish calling them whores and prostitutes. They were called loyalist sympathisers, class traitors and just the worst of the worst. The protesters kept shouting ‘peaceful protest’ while blocking the road. The protesters actually walked out onto the road blocking traffic. People that were driving were stopping and telling us that they were afraid to drive. They were intimating people on the road. They were calling the private security crowd loyalists and UDA thugs and the reality is that these guys were from Dublin. A female garda was kicked in the chest and had her chest bone bruised, while she was outnumbered by three men.

Live streaming

THE unit had balaclavas on because they knew they were going to be live streamed and that turned out to be right. One of the garda has been threatened, abused and his face has been plastered all over Twitter and social media. Someone said they would put a bullet in him and another wanted to see him cable tied. Dublin is a small city and gardaí have to be protected.

Private life

THE real worst thing is the invasion of privacy. People go on that it is a vocation and you are a garda 24 hours a day. I am not. I have a private life and my own private beliefs or thoughts that may in some cases contradict what I am doing in work. But I have a job to do and the law is the law. I signed up for it. But when I’m off I’m off. And I don’t have to explain to some dude in a pub or man in a shop why I do it. When these people single you out online and put you out there, your private life is over. When I’m working, I’m a public servant and there is a chain of command and I obey the rules. That’s my job and I do my best to protect people and I believe I do that well.

There was one garda I knew who was so abused online that he shut down his accounts. He thought that would be the end of it but suddenly his wife started receiving abusive, horrible messages. This is a man with a child and they were posting where he lived online. They were putting pictures of his car online and talked about his daily routine. He has a family and that has to make people really scared.

Water Charges

EVERY garda goes out the door every morning and tells their partner that everything is fine and will be fine. They don’t want them to worry. Then suddenly on Facebook or Twitter they turn on the phone and they see that mayhem has broken out. Then your family think that everyone now thinks you are a scumbag and know where you live and work and that leads to terrible stress.

The water protests were bad. There was specific targeting and identifying of members. And the reality was that probably 99% of the gardaí didn’t agree with water charges. But gardaí can’t just turn our backs on the job we signed up to do. It doesn’t work like that.

Protect our identity

THE best case scenario that we can hope for is that people acknowledge that this is not normal policing and gardaí are entitled to protect their identity. Let’s get one thing clear; gardaí weren’t hiding their complete identity. Gardaí were tagged and everyone there had their tags on show so that if there was a complaint made against one that garda could be identified. The sergeant in charge knew the identity of each one as did the inspector. It is very easy to track officers on duty, you can’t hide it. This isn’t the Seventies; you can’t hide them or take them off. The best case scenario is that on occasions where they have to do these sort of jobs, they will wear a different number to the one they wear on ordinary duty. They can still be identified by the relevant authorities but it will rule out being identified by these groups during your day-to-day working life.

Racial abuse

ONE of the gardaí at the scene was not Irish and he was racially abused. He was called a chink, a Chinese f ***** and told to go home. Others got called animals, the filth, paedophile protectors. But none of that appeared in any of the videos doing the rounds. They were carefully edited.

Homelessness

THEY can come up with whatever propaganda they want, there was not one homeless person living in that place. They wanted to highlight issues within the housing market and they are entitled to do that within the law. I guarantee you 100% that gardaí in the city centre know and help, on a daily basis, the homeless community, on a personal level, more than anyone at that protest. Everyone grows a conscience at Christmas and Bono and Glen Hansard go singing on Grafton Street. But the gardaí deal with them every day. I have seen gardaí give homeless people money and call centres to make sure they get a bed. I remember one drunk who was intent on doing himself serious harm and checking in on him every single shift for three weeks and making sure he got through it. I don’t remember any of these people checking doing it. Their energy would be far better spent raising money to help mental health charities or house building charities. Rather than sitting in a building causing grief.