Senior Garda who cancelled 744 penalty point notices won't be charged

ohnonotgmail

server down wrote: »

Honestly mate. You are part of the problem.

I’d bet without much searching I’d find police officers fired for much less in many sane jurisdictions.

how can you fire somebody who has already retired?

Gijoseph

Some people are hell bent on excusing our glorious police force. One being the biggest government shill on boards.

server down

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

how can you fire somebody who has already retired?

Take his pension.

As for an investigation. It should be easy enough to work out a link between the 744 people left off and police officers.

Then fire them. No pension.

ohnonotgmail

server down wrote: »

Take his pension.

As for an investigation. It should be easy enough to work out a link between the 744 people left off and police officers.

Then fire them. No pension.

and what disciplinary offence have they committed?

suicide_circus

I don't care if it costs a million plus to go after these guys. The reputation of AGS is in the toilet. Wrongdoers in the organisation and those retired need to be dragged over the coals kicking and screaming. Justice needs to be seen to be done. Any money spent on the prosecutions can be seen as an investment in the future of policing in this state. I currently have no faith in the gardai to be good and honourable.

JeffKenna

I wonder out of these 744 people who had penalty points squshed, how many went on to kill or injure people on the road?

server down

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

and what disciplinary offence have they committed?

Gross misconduct.

Are we seriously saying there’s no violation in using a senior officer’s password to let your friends and family off tickets, thus interfering with justice?

ED E

If anyone else else has access to your credentials, thats a breach. A big one. It circumvents all access controls Garda IT have put in place. Thats grounds for dismissal in any normal organization. But Gardai are trained to embezzle in templemore so....

ohnonotgmail

server down wrote: »

Gross misconduct.

Are we seriously saying there’s no violation in using a senior officer’s password to let your friends and family off tickets, thus interfering with justice?

ED E wrote: »

If anyone else else has access to your credentials, thats a breach. A big one. It circumvents all access controls Garda IT have put in place. Thats grounds for dismissal in any normal organization. But Gardai are trained to embezzle in templemore so....

not if it was condoned by senior management.

Nettle Soup

suicide_circus wrote: »

The consequence for this large scale breach of procedures and corrupt practices?

Absolutely nothing.

Yeah what a message that sends...:o

Nettle Soup

seamus wrote: »

Yeah that's nothing like I said at all.

But I'm not into kangaroo courts and dismissals made for publicity. Everyone is entitled to due process.

Find out what the charges are. Then have a think about how you would go about prosecuting them.

And you'll quickly to come to a realisation that all you will have is another black hole for money to pour into with less than satisfactory results at the end.

Rather than engaging in wild goose witch hunts, use the money to drive procedural changes and improve morale in the force, and you'll get a better police force. Spend the money attempting (and failing) to prosecute one or two Gardai, and you gain nothing.

Stop waffling and answer the question.

Do you think the senior Garda should be disciplined in any way?

Nettle Soup

Gijoseph wrote: »

Some people are hell bent on excusing our glorious police force. One being the biggest government shill on boards.

It's actually hard to fathom how someone can train their mind to be so blinkered.

GM228

server down wrote: »

Gross misconduct.

Gross misconduct is only a term to describe a serious breach of for example your terms and conditions, or for something like theft, bullying etc.

The question is what is the breach?

seamus

server down wrote: »

Honestly mate. You are part of the problem.

I'm part of the problem? Asking for due process? Yeah, let's combat corruption with more corruption! To hell with due process! Let's start disciplining people because the public is angry! That's worked really well in the past.

server down wrote: »

Why? Why would it fail?

Why would it succeed? Do you have access to the full body of evidence that GSOC have compiled?

Have a look at what GSOC have said. They're not even recommended disciplinary procedures, never mind criminal ones. So it seems that GSOC have no confidence that an actual case can be made of their findings.

ED E wrote: »

If anyone else else has access to your credentials, thats a breach. A big one. It circumvents all access controls Garda IT have put in place. Thats grounds for dismissal in any normal organization.

It's only grounds for dismissals if it's not established process.

If the policy of an organisation is that credentials may not be shared, but it's standard process to do so and everyone knows about it, and management explicitly or implicitly (by looking the other way) allow it, then any attempt to discipline someone for it will fail.

You can't discipline someone for breaking a T&C or a code of conduct when it's accepted standard practice to do so.

This is where Whistleblowers like McCabe come in - pointing out management failings where such breaches are being allowed/ignored.

Nettle Soup wrote: »

Do you think the senior Garda should be disciplined in any way?

Yes, if it can be proven that what he has done is a disciplinary matter. See above.

To illustrate:

You bring this Garda in front of a disciplinary committee. You have a print out of 744 ticket cancellations. You ask him to explain them.

He says, "I don't recall any of them, someone else must have used my login".

You challenge him about this; "why would they"? He says, "Because it's standard practice. If someone didn't remember theirs you logged in for them or texted them your login. Or you left yourself logged into a terminal and they may have used it."

"Are you aware that's in breach of the code of conduct".

"It was standard practice, and we were instructed to share our credentials by our CO on numerous occasions".

---

Now what do you do? You can't prove he cancelled any of them. And you will find 400 other Gardai who will confirm that this was standard process. So what do you do?

server down

GM228 wrote: »

Gross misconduct is only a term to describe a serious breach of for example your terms and conditions, or for something like theft, bullying etc.

The question is what is the breach?

Is it?

The breach is using unauthorised credentials for one. The other is to pervert justice by allowing certain favoured citizens off.

server down

seamus wrote: »

I'm part of the problem? Asking for due process? Yeah, let's combat corruption with more corruption! To hell with due process! Let's start disciplining people because the public is angry! That's worked really well in the past.Why would it succeed? Do you have access to the full body of evidence that GSOC have compiled?

You are not asking for due process. You are literally asking for no process.

Have a look at what GSOC have said. They're not even recommended disciplinary procedures, never mind criminal ones. So it seems that GSOC have no confidence that an actual case can be made of their findings.

Or what the rest of us would see as a cover up.

It's only grounds for dismissals if it's not established process.

If it’s established process to allow junior officers access to senior officers logins to allow certain citizens to be exempt from penalties the the orchestrators of that process need to be fired.

If the policy of an organisation is that credentials may not be shared, but it's standard process to do so and everyone knows about it, and management explicitly or implicitly (by looking the other way) allow it, then any attempt to discipline someone for it will fail.

So fire or discipline the management.

You can't discipline someone for breaking a T&C or a code of conduct when it's accepted standard practice to do so.

I am actually pretty dubious about that. If there’s a code of conduct saying Gardaí can’t search illegally but it’s done regularly do we ignore the personal guards responsibility?

If a police force in the US is totally corrupt from the management down does that make police drug dealing legal? Or acceptable?

server down

Meanwhile in Blighty.

Officer tries to give an inspector going for promotion some interview questions. Gross misconduct charges brought.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/09/25/top-police-officer-admits-gross-misconduct-after-trying-to-help-candidate-in-job-interview-6954841/

seamus

server down wrote: »

So fire or discipline the management.

Off you go. Explain to me in detail how you would go about this.

I am actually pretty dubious about that. If there’s a code of conduct saying Gardaí can’t search illegally but it’s done regularly do we ignore the personal guards responsibility?

That's breaking the law though.

Sharing credentials to a system is not breaking the law.

Cancelling points may be, but that brings us back to the salient issue - proving who cancelled the points and whether those cancellations were justified.

Poor procedural adherence, poor management and poor IT governance have left us with with a big mess of unaccountable actions.

You don't need to prove that a law was broken. You need to have prove who broke it. Can you do that?

WoollyRedHat

Captain Obvious wrote: »

His jurisdiction is the Republic of Ireland.

Pretty sure I read on one of the news sites covering the report that in relation to company policy and clearing penalty points, that he had committed a breach as it was outside his own jurisdiction. Which would make you ask what was going on.

GM228 wrote: »

And how has the Guard dishonestly made a gain for himself or a loss to another person?

You could make an argument that his actions resulted in the other person having gained something from having the points cleared. My understanding is that it is not solely limited to monetary acts.

nice_guy80

Pity I didn't have his number

server down

seamus wrote: »

Off you go. Explain to me in detail how you would go about this.

You work out who has authorised people using higher officers credentials and fire them if guilty based on gross misconduct.

You don't need to prove that a law was broken. You need to have prove who broke it. Can you do that?

I don’t need to prove a law was broken at all. I never mentioned court. Just that the actions of certain members brought the organisation into disrepute. A firing matter.

TheDoc

seamus wrote: »

Yeah that's nothing like I said at all.

But I'm not into kangaroo courts and dismissals made for publicity. Everyone is entitled to due process.

Find out what the charges are. Then have a think about how you would go about prosecuting them.

And you'll quickly to come to a realisation that all you will have is another black hole for money to pour into with less than satisfactory results at the end.

Rather than engaging in wild goose witch hunts, use the money to drive procedural changes and improve morale in the force, and you'll get a better police force. Spend the money attempting (and failing) to prosecute one or two Gardai, and you gain nothing.

I'm also not sure why people are chasing criminal proceedings here?

This is clearly a breach of a number of what would be assumed standard policies in a number of organisations of this size, it's also just a serious breach of process and considering the action that was taken intentionally, you would expect the individuals to be dismissed effective immediately and an actual example to be set to not just the members of the force and administration, but to the public aswell.

That last part is important that isn't a part of any other working job or organisation. But as an organisation that requires trust and faith in for protection and the law to be upheld, it goes a long way to know they actually take it serious.

Laughable if nothing comes of this, if I hadn't a low enough threshold for the Gardaí in general, this just sets it lower.

Odhinn

TheDoc wrote: »

I'm also not sure why people are chasing criminal proceedings here?

This is clearly a breach of a number of what would be assumed standard policies in a number of organisations of this size, it's also just a serious breach of process and considering the action that was taken intentionally, you would expect the individuals to be dismissed effective immediately and an actual example to be set to not just the members of the force and administration, but to the public aswell.

That last part is important that isn't a part of any other working job or organisation. But as an organisation that requires trust and faith in for protection and the law to be upheld, it goes a long way to know they actually take it serious.

Laughable if nothing comes of this, if I hadn't a low enough threshold for the Gardaí in general, this just sets it lower.

When the regime that Callinan ran and seemingly thrived under is finally exposed, its going to drop an awful lot further.

suicide_circus

server down wrote: »

Meanwhile in Blighty.

Officer tries to give an inspector going for promotion some interview questions. Gross misconduct charges brought.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/09/25/top-police-officer-admits-gross-misconduct-after-trying-to-help-candidate-in-job-interview-6954841/

That wouldnt even be seen as inappropriate in AGS

archer22

Its outrageous that all this corruption is going to be overlooked and they can continue on in their jobs....especially now that its being revealed that their corruption has been spreading to other government agencies, some politicians and large segments of the media....(as can be seen by the vast and varied array of cnuts that tried to shaft Maurice McCabe).

They are turning Ireland into a complete ****hole!!

valoren

If there are any Gardai on Boards can you pm for my driver license? I'd like to have some penalty points cancelled too. Can you put down 'bees were attacking my livestock' or 'I was late for Squash' or....ah sure... know what just put down 'cancelled' altogether. And I know it will say I was doing 126kph in a 100kph zone but yerra don't mind that because I'm an excellent, safe driver. I swear on me life. Be a pal eh? Oh and don't worry if you think you might get into trouble, don't be one bit worried nothing will happen I guarantee you that. Thnk hun xoxoxoxox

GM228

server down wrote: »

The breach is using unauthorised credentials for one.

Difficult to prove who used the credentials.

server down wrote: »

The other is to pervert justice by allowing certain favoured citizens off.

Considering Gardaí have a common law power of discretion in weather or not to apply the law it would not be possible to bring such a charge. Also there is the concept of "contempt of the courts" identified by the Supreme Court in 1965 which could apply to Gardaí, but it would have to involve a process due before the courts, remember the penalty points system is an administrative system, not a mechanism of the courts/justice.

mattser

valoren wrote: »

If there are any Gardai on Boards can you pm for my driver license? I'd like to have some penalty points cancelled too. Can you put down 'bees were attacking my livestock' or 'I was late for Squash' or....ah sure... know what just put down 'cancelled' altogether. And I know it will say I was doing 126kph in a 100kph zone but yerra don't mind that because I'm an excellent, safe driver. I swear on me life. Be a pal eh? Oh and don't worry if you think you might get into trouble, don't be one bit worried nothing will happen I guarantee you that. Thnk hun xoxoxoxox

Cynicism aside, doesn't it say as much about the offending motorist, as it does about the Garda.
I don't think your fictitious motorist will be demanding his points back anytime soon.
Welcome to Ireland.

GM228

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

You could make an argument that his actions resulted in the other person having gained something from having the points cleared. My understanding is that it is not solely limited to monetary acts.

You couldn't because you would base the argument on what might have been.

There is no guarantee that a person who's penalty notices were dropped were first of all not dropped for legitimate reasons, and secondly even if not there's no guarantee those persons would have paid the fines or been prosecuted.

Odhinn

archer22 wrote: »

Its outrageous that all this corruption is going to be overlooked and they can continue on in their jobs....especially now that its being revealed that their corruption has been spreading to other government agencies, some politicians and large segments of the media....(as can be seen by the vast and varied array of cnuts that tried to shaft Maurice McCabe).

They are turning Ireland into a complete ****hole!!

They turned it into one for an awful lot of people.