INEFFICIENCY AND LACK OF VISION MEAN GANG DEATHS GO UNSOLVED

The very public execution of John Daly last week brings the murder
toll relating to gangs in Finglas to 49 -- and all but a handful
remain unsolved.

One of the most frequent sights on RTE's recent news coverage is of
its crime correspondent, Paul Reynolds, standing in a suburban
working-class estate reporting details of the latest gangland slaying
in Dublin.

Paul is by now familiar with the route from Montrose or his home to
Ratoath Drive or Cloonlara Drive in Finglas, where the latest victim
met his end. Increasingly, Paul's reports end with the observation
that, given the Garda track record, there is little prospect of the
latest murder being solved.

He is absolutely correct. A tally of gangland killings in or
emanating from gangs in Finglas over the past decade shows that there
were 49 murders, only three of which have gone to court. Figures
released by the gardai a few weeks ago give a total of around 240
unsolved murders in the same period, most of them gun killings.

If it wasn't for the fact that John Daly previously made national
headlines by phoning Joe Duffy on Liveline from his cell in
Portlaoise prison, his death would have barely merited more than a
few lines on RTE and inside-page reports in newspapers.

Daly's murder had been widely predicted since his release from prison
only a few months ago. The entire criminal fraternity was angry with
him for bringing attention to the use of mobile phones by prisoners,
and the ensuing big sweep which led to almost 2,000 being seized
from inmates. He was a particularly dumb criminal with a knack for
making enemies both within and outside prison.

One of the main suspects in his murder -- a Dublin detective quipped
last week that they had narrowed the list down to "around 2,000
suspects" -- is the current drug boss in Finglas, a 27-year-old who
rose to prominence this year following the murder of gang leader
Martin "Marlo" Hyland last December.

Finglas, along with several other working-class areas of Dublin and
Limerick, has been on a downward spiral of gang violence since the
mid-1990s. Gang bosses are assuming power younger and also dying
younger than ever before. They are so young and inconsequential that
they no longer even merit newspaper nicknames.

The criminal assets legislation introduced after the murder of
journalist Veronica Guerin has meant that they can't enjoy splashing
out and profile building with the cash they are amassing from drug
sales. They live in anonymous suburbs, often a bit away from their
home turf, in modest private developments on the outskirts of the
city and holiday in Spain -- where they might own nondescript "villas".

Ten years ago it would have been unheard of for someone to claim to
be a "crime boss" at the age of 27. The Penguins, Generals and Monks
of that era were substantial figures who spent their money in style,
seeking social advancement and paying for private education for their
children so they wouldn't suffer the social deprivation and lack of
schooling their parents had endured.

Finglas's first major drug gang was led by Peter Judge, who was 41
when he was shot dead by the IRA as he sat in his car outside the
Royal Oak pub on December 7, 1996. Judge had earned himself the
newspaper soubriquet "Psycho" due to his gruesome murder of a local
small-time criminal, Jock Corbally, over a small debt.

In that period, post the first ceasefire in the North, the IRA
leadership had decided to keep its volunteers busy by ordering the
execution of known drug dealers in Dublin and Belfast. Around 30 were
assassinated -- including at least five in Finglas, where they also
murdered the main heroin supplier, Joseph Foran, in February 2000.
The policy was politically motivated. It made the IRA and its rising
political wing, Sinn Fein, popular in working-class areas like
Finglas beset by drugs and crime. The subsequent election successes
with two TDs and 13 Sinn Fein councillors in Dublin was due, in
part, to this policy.

However, the IRA murder spree had side effects that were to change
and worsen organised crime in Dublin. The disruption of the main
gangs led by older, wiser criminals paved the way for the emergence
of younger and wilder gangs.

It also led to the complete corruption of the IRA itself, whose
Dublin members began selectively killing some dealers and taking
protection money from others. Some men who had been in the Concerned
Parents Against Drugs (CPAD) marches were now hand-in-glove with the
drug traffickers. Recently, some former CPAD members have actually
become traffickers. The public awareness and disgust over this
decline into drug dealing by IRA figures in Dublin partly explains
Sinn Fein's recent decline in popularity.

Following the executions of Judge and Foran and a number of their
associates in Finglas, the way was open for the rise of Shane Coates
and Stephen Sugg and their gang, known as "The Westies". Coates and
Sugg had been in the Garda's sights since their teenage years as a
pair of wild young thieves who had aspirations and a taste for violence.

Their first move up the drug-dealing tree was to murder 43-year-old
dealer Pascal Boland, whom they shot dead at his home in Mulhuddart
in January 2002. They became bigger and bolder, at one point
controlling almost half the heroin supply in Dublin. When they were
cornered in a shoot-out with gardai in Co Meath at the end of 2003
and had to flee the country, Dublin experienced one of the worst
heroin droughts in years. Garda attrition wore the Westies down and
the gang disintegrated. Coates, 31, and Sugg, still only 27, were
eventually deposed. Their escape to Spain was not enough to save
them. Their bodies were found buried under a concrete slab in January
2004.

The murders of Sugg and Coates brought another round of bloodletting
as a number of gangs vied for supremacy in Finglas. Around 20 murders
have taken place in or around Finglas since their deaths, including
another in Spain. No single big gang has emerged in the area since;
rather, three medium-sized gangs: one a gang of ATM robbers led by
the 27-year-old suspected of murdering John Daly; and the other led
by Marlo Hyland until his murder last December along with the
innocent 20-year-old apprentice plumber, Anthony Campbell.

According to local sources, there is an inherent instability in the
current situation. Hyland's gang has broken up and had to make way
for the other two, currently major gangs, but the gangland scene in
Finglas and its neighbouring working-class suburbs from Coolock to
Blanchardstown is dangerously fractured. Alliances have been formed
by gang leaders during time spent in prison, with outside gangs
including those from Limerick, who have brought their own brand of
madness to the Dublin scene.

The murder of John Daly has yet again highlighted the inefficiencies
and lack of vision in tackling crime here.

There are fewer gardai working in the "K" district -- which covers
Finglas, Blanchardstown and Cabra -- than there were 20 years ago.
The "K" is only one troubled part of the Dublin Metropolitan Region
(DMR) West, which stretches from Coolock and Blanchardstown in the
north and north-west to Ballyfermot in the south and as far out as
Rathcoole in the west. This division has only one chief
superintendent, the recently appointed John Twomey, one detective
superintendent, Hubert Collins and one uniformed superintendent, Hugh
Hartnett.

Most of the unsolved murders in this State -- including the 49 in the
"K" district alone -- are in DMR West. Yet, rural divisions like
Carlow/Kildare or Tipperary, which have no organised crime, have
exactly the same management structures and roughly similar numbers of
gardai.

The Garda Reserve, an outfit which has no function in detecting or
even dealing with crime, let alone serious crime, has only 170
volunteers -- yet it, too, has a chief superintendent, superintendent
and other middle-ranking gardai to run it.

DMR West is, according to detectives, utterly overwhelmed. Yet it
continues to be treated as though it were a rural backwater in terms
of resources. One local detective recently discovered that there are
as many detectives in Longford as there are in any of the DMR West
stations.

Following yet another spate of gangland murders two years ago,
Commissioner Noel Conroy appointed an additional 50 gardai to
detective duties based in Harcourt Square, specifically to target
gangland violence.

The "Nifty Fifty", as they are nicknamed, have been working
tirelessly, gathering intelligence, carrying out surveillance and
have had remarkable success given that most are young and relatively
inexperienced in detective work. But colleagues say these young crime
fighters are becoming increasingly disillusioned at their growing
realisation that, if they had opted for safer, uncomplicated duties
not involving crime detection, they would stand a much better chance
of career enhancement.

As one pointed out: "These are great young gardai, but if they got
themselves office jobs they would be better off. They see people who
sit on their arses all day getting jobs. The fellow who stops people
for tax and insurance is likely to be promoted more quickly."

The killing in DMR West will continue. As well as criminals killing
criminals, innocent people are dying, such as Anthony Campbell, Eddie
Ward (shot dead while fixing a car for criminal Brian Downes two
weeks ago), Donna Cleary (shot dead at a party in Coolock in March
last year) and Baiba Saulite (shot dead last November by Marlo
Hyland's mob).

It's no coincidence they all were murdered by criminals from DMR
West.