DEALERS FEEL THE HEAT FROM 'CLEANSTREET'

Crime figures continue to drop dramatically and if current trends are
maintained will have plummetted by an unprecedented 25pc during the
Government's term of office by the end of the year.

There is no doubt that drugs have had a major impact on crime
throughout this decade and the latter half of the '80s and most of the
bigtime gangs diverted into trafficking from armed robberies to
maximise their profits.

That pattern is now changing again, partly because gang leaders
realise the crime boom industry for the new millennium is centred on
computers and its far more profitable and less risky to offload a
multimillion pound shipment of disk drives than heroin or ecstasy.

The success of the Garda drive against the drug barons in the wake of
the Veronica Guerin murder and, in particular, the inroads made by the
recently formed Criminal Assets Bureau, armed with a raft of tough and
radical legislative powers, has also been a significant factor.

But that success means little to the residents of drug-ravaged
communities in urban blackspots or to the parents of young children
who are being targeted by dealers when they visit clubs and pubs at
weekends.

A three month garda operation, that culminated yesterday in Dublin and
five other counties in Leinster, was aimed specifically at that
network. The officer, who co-ordinated the well planned swoops and is
in overall command of Operation Cleanstreet is Assistant Garda
Commissioner Jim McHugh.

He told the Irish Independent last night: “The value of the drugs
seized in this operation is not relevant. Our aim is to eliminate this
network on the streets because without the local dealers the big
traffickers cannot exist.”

Undercover detectives from the Garda national drugs unit were
organised by Det Chief Supt Ted Murphy and Det Supt Eddie Rock into
groups of “buyers” who targeted the dealers and gathered intelligence
about the distribution network in the six counties. As a result of
their work, a total of 191 suspects were identified, with 155 in
Dublin and the rest in Athlone, Drogheda, Tullamore, Portlaoise and
Gorey. Gardai have already charged 37 of them with drug offences and
the rest will be processed over the next fortnight. In Dublin gardai
seized heroin exclusively while in the other counties the seizures
comprised cannabis and ecstasy with small sums of money also
confiscated.

The statistics underline the views already held by senior Gardai.
These are largely people coming into the system for the first time and
gardai believe that now is the time to help them change their lives
and avoid becoming bigtime traffickers within the next few years.

After the previous phase of Cleanstreet gardai were expecting that
some of the arrested heroin dealers would be offered places in an
unique treatment-training programme. The heroin diversion programme
was hailed as a major breakthrough in the authorities' approach to
tackling heroin addiction and would provide an alternative to custody
for the offenders.

However, the programme has yet to take off and since it needs the
approval of the courts, it could be delayed for some time. An attempt
to give smalltime offenders an opportunity to stay out of jail and a
pilot project to be set up in Clondalkin in west Dublin remains in the
pipeline. At the forefront of that action plan are FAS, which is to
provide a training course for offenders alongside a treatment
programme, and the Department of Social Welfare.

As one senior garda officer put it last night: “We can arrest as many
dealers as we like but unless all of the agencies get together and
target potential users through health and education programmes, the
scourge of drugs in society will never be eliminated.”