‘Tackle teen knife crime like virus to stamp it out’
A FORMER Garda assistant commissioner believes a ‘pandemic strategy’ should be used to stamp out knife crime.
Pat Leahy, who recently retired, told the Irish Mail on Sunday that the scourge should be dealt with and quashed like a ‘violent illness’.
He dismissed actions such as the ‘stop and search’ method to find knives on youths and said gardaí should instead target the ‘root cause’ of the problem.
That method would require a ‘change in mindset’ but it would be an approach that would stop stabbings from spreading and ultimately save lives.
He suggested one method in which paid community leaders would target youths who ‘are in harm’ of ending up in crime and you ‘influence them in a certain direction’ such as towards employment.
‘To interpret the public health approach
‘It is not a silver bullet with quick results’
to crime, they’re not looking at violent crime as an illness: what they’re saying is the strategy that you can apply to it is the same they’re applying in pandemics.
‘That you identify where it is growing and stop it from spreading, because it does spread. If it goes untreated and the police just dip in and out with stop and search, they’re not treating the root causes.
‘So what they’re saying is if it works in a health setting, if you identify it, analyse it and shut it down quickly, why can that not work for crime? And of course it could.’
Mr Leahy said an approach similar to that of Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) is the
‘way forward’.
Dublin Rathdown TD Neale Richmond called for Ireland to set up a similar unit following the murder of Azzam Raguragui. The 18-year-old was stabbed to death in south Dublin two years ago following a row with another teenager over a stolen bike.
The VRU approaches violence in the same way it approaches public health. It uses a variety of agencies working together to stop youngsters at risk from becoming involved in crime.
‘It’s not a silver bullet that you can get a quick result on,’ Mr Leahy said. ‘You won’t. It is a real change in mindset required by the police to get into a real community orientation approach to policing. But not only with the police, you need a lot of stakeholders on board to drive this forward. A lot of the agencies that would be working in the north inner city at the moment – you have all of the local agencies and groups
all being leveraged to produce a common outcome. That’s not easy.
‘You align all your local resources to influence the kids that are in harm or getting into this and once you go in and influence them in a certain direction you have to have supports outside to pick them up. So you have to have people prepared to employ them, to provide counselling and so on.
‘It takes huge resources and the
police have to change their mindset in their approach and the discourse that’s taking place and that’s not easy in policing.’
Fine Gael deputy Mr Richmond this week said Justice Minister Helen McEntee had vowed to tackle knife crime.
‘The Justice Plan 2021 contains key commitments that can help tackle this scourge.’