Violent Street Crime in Dublin

Boston

Most of you will be aware of the events of last Saturday week when a 17 years old was stabbed to death by a gang of even younger kids for his mobile phone outside the uci Cineplex.

This gripped a nation as if they had been living on cloud nine and had only now woken up to the reality of modern day, fast lane Ireland. The family where quoted in today’s papers as saying at least this will make the streets safer, at least something will be done.

But its is less then a year on since two Gardi where murdered by little scummers after their car was rammed. What deterrent exists when someone can stab someone else to death, then rings his love one and gloats about the murder and only be charged with manslaughter while the other two are only being done for murder.

The Gardi in Ireland no longer pull any weight, more and more people are turning to organizations like the IRA to solve these issues. Laugh if you will be speaking form experiences there is strong “republican” elements in north centre city Dublin.

But the issue goes deeper then that, these tree lads are also believed to be responsible for putting a man in a comma the Saturday before the attack on Alan. Where is this man’s justice? Where is his out cry? I personally believe that these people simply went out to hurt somebody, that taking the mobile phone was only a second though. Some people will find it disturbing to believe that in Ireland there are people who are just out for one thing and one thing only, to hurt other people. I can give examples of men beaten half to death by gangs with wallets full of money and no a penny taken, simply because they where the next target.

These people get away with it because they are often high on something at the time, and also there’s no place to but them. There is no place in Ireland for young offenders. St pats is full, hell there’s a waiting list for pats.

Dublin is becoming a far more violent and dangerous place, and if history proves true, where Dublin’s leads the rest of the country will soon follow

dathi1

I suspect the violent crime rate will keep on rising in the next few years..it could even reach ridiculous proportions. Why? well just look at the way we deal with these crimes. The debates on National TV and Radio the following day had snippets on how to "avoid having your mobile phone robbed". Also how to behave when in public and how to avoid situations where you might be attacked. Rather than complicate the issue we should start by introducing measures that will put fear into people that commit these crimes in the first place, although that would be hard under EU rules and regs etc. The other rehab schemes etc can be introduced afterwards. Priority should be with victims of crime and then sort out the perpetrators "social needs" as they call it afterwards. These people that hang outside multiplex cinemas and elsewhere are not psychopaths and "high" waiting for their chance..they're your ordinary John and Rita from 2 doors down who's mother would say..."Rob mobile phones?...My son wouldn't do a thing like that" Expect more of the same in the near future.

gurramok

I agree with you in that streets are not safe.
What is needed is some type of curfew, a hardline crackdown on teenagers in anti-social behaviour. Call it zero-tolerance.
Unfortunately murders like this are going to keep happening until something is done.
Letting the perpertrators out on bail in this case is a disgrace.
Charging one of them with manslaughter is sickening, they stuck a knife in that poor lad with intention of killing...that is murder.
Problem in this country is that there is no police action to combat
anti-social behaviour.

Only tonight near me, there are a group of scumbag teenagers firing bangers at houses damaging property and frightening the folks, i call the police nearly every night about this, rarely do they come and do something.

Anyway, its better to leave dublin now before it gets worse.....personally i would like to move a quiet place in the countryside where scumbags are non-existent

In other countries they would be locked up or sent to boot camp....but oh no in ireland there is inaction or they are let out to do the same crimes again !!

Difficult

"Only tonight near me, there are a group of scumbag teenagers firing bangers at houses damaging property and frightening the folks, i call the police nearly every night about this, rarely do they come and do something."


some kids are playing with fireworks on your street.....were you never young ? no wonder the gardai don't have time for half the crap that goes on in dublin city with people nothing better to do than ring them for kids playing with fireworks. get real
and labelling "teenagers" as "scumbags" isn't helping very much is it ? what do you know about these kids ? what do you do in your area to help provide them with something better to do ???

SFA i imagine

Boston

curfew is pointless, since it will basically be the honor system as scummers wont obay it and I don't know of a single garda officer that will go into a group of teenagers and break them up.

dathi1 im telling you now, it has already reached ridiculous proportions. Of course you want to believe this guy was stabbed for a mobile phone, that people aren't attacked at random for no reason, because then, it some small way your reassured that if you just give them the phone they wont hurt you. The media supports this view point, but its as far from the reality of the situation as you can get. Do you really think the kid held up such a fight he had to be stabbed to get the phone. I don't think so.

They attacked that man a week before that because they wanted to hurt someone and they attacked alan last week for the same reason. Shame somebody couldn't have done there job and prevented this from happening

Boston

Originally posted by Difficult
"what do you do in your area to help provide them with something better to do ???

SFA i imagine

Actually i knew one of the scummers that helped rob the kid.
Even if i didnt, and i didnt to well, i've known a hundread like them.

Difficult

Actually i knew one of the scummers that helped rob the kid.

that's not really answering the question keep giving them labels like scummers they're not going to act any other way but like scummers we're talking about 15 and 16yr old KIDS

bonkey

The problem is that society wants to gardai to accept responsibility for coping with society's own failings.

The solution to crime is not a police state. I'm sure most people agree to this, but will say that we should have stricter this, and stricter that.

Fine - maybe we should have a more capable policing system - but none of these stricter measures will resolve the problems. They may offset them somewhat. They may delay problems becoming more pervasive, but they will not solve them.

There are major fundamental failings with the societal structure in cities (moreso than smaller areas). These problems are the root of the problem. Their resolution, ultimately, will be recognised as the solution to the problem.

Unfortunately, there isnt a single model for people living in large concentrated groups which seems to offer a realstic solution to these problems.

jc

RainyDay

Whilst I wouldn't put fireworks/bangers in the same league as the terrible events at UCI last week, I wouldn't underestimate the damage they can do.

First of all, there is a totally underground, blackmarket, untaxed, unregulated industry out there. This is playing into the hands of the crims, in the same way that Prohibition in the 30's in the US created the Mafia. With no safety standards in place, every kid who puts a match to a firework is risking their safety. Every year we see the pictures from the casualty units of the kids who fire up their hands or face with these potentially lethal 'toys'.

And we're not talking about just a few bangers here. The damned things have been going off since mid-Sept round here (Dublin 16), and they seem to continue well into November. Somebody is making a pile of money out of these things, and I imagine it's being used to support other more serious crimes (paramilitaries, drugs, etc).

Fireworks & bangers also cause huge problems for pets. I know of at least one dog that had to be put down last year after being terrified by the constant noise of the fireworks over weeks & weeks.

I'd love to see the Gardai either eliminating this problem at source or the Govt regulating & legalising fireworks to take it out of the hands of the crims.

Sand

Kids have simply been taught that no matter what they do - theyll either get away with it, or get such a slap on the wrist that they can treat the whole exercise as a joke, something to brag about when they get back with their mates.

Violent crime will keep on increasing, and people will still keep on saying "But theyre just sweet, adorable kids - aaaaaaaaawwwwwww, look at their puppy dog eyes and hang dog exspression - hes learned his lesson marge". Quite simply if someone was to drive off those scumbags and stop them from throwing fireworks at peoples property theyd be the ones arrested and put away - reinforcing the lesson to the scumbags that theyre untouchable. And Difficult, I dont know how you spent your childhood, but I didnt go around throwing fireworks at peoples houses. I was weird like that.

and labelling "teenagers" as "scumbags" isn't helping very much is it ?

Call a spade a spade. Plenty of teenagers who arent scumbags- why does their name have to be blackened by being associated with scumbags?

They may delay problems becoming more pervasive, but they will not solve them.

Depends on your objective - if its to protect against violent crime an effective law enforcement policy is your main concern, and your best tool in combatting it. Its also the concern of the people being terrorised by these scumbags.

If you want to combat poverty, then you would tend to do so regardless of whether violent crime exsisted or not.

mike65

I blame the parents.

As usual I was listening to LiveLine in the week and a fella phoned up to recall an incident that occured, in which his son and a friend were attacked by kids for a phone, after the father and a few friends went straight down to the scene where the brats were still hanging around and layed into them!

Needless to say Joe Duffy pointed out this was highly illegal and the father agreed but said he just was'nt going to let the incident pass this being merely the lastest in a long line by these kids in the area.

Mob justice but understandable when the cops have no measninful power to deal with those underage.

On the banger issue, it looks like they are about to be outlawed in the UK, which means fewer will find thier way here.

Mike.

Difficult

you blame the parents ????

hahaha.....ok so the guys father goes down to the scene and what does he do ? beats the head of the guy who robbed the phone ? now what has his son and the guy who owned the phone learned ? absloutley **** all fight fire with fire ? that father is as much of a scumbag now as the guy who robbed the phone.

how come none of this is going on in foxrock ? blackrock ? kiliney ? malahide ? is it only working class parents that are bad parents ???

Bard

Originally posted by Difficult

how come none of this is going on in foxrock ? blackrock ? kiliney ? malahide ? is it only working class parents that are bad parents ???

Do you honestly believe that all those areas you mention are crime free?

mike65

Originally posted by Difficult
you blame the parents ????

hahaha.....ok so the guys father goes down to the scene and what does he do ? beats the head of the guy who robbed the phone ? now what has his son and the guy who owned the phone learned ?

I don't remember endorsing the actions of the father I just understood - his reaction in the heat of the moment his son comming home beaten and brusied (I forgot to mention in a Garda car to boot). He said his wife pleaded with him not to do anything stupid.

Mike.

Difficult

Do you honestly believe that all those areas you mention are crime free?

crime free no

seriousness of the crimes alot less and the amount alot lot less.

Difficult

"I don't remember endorsing the actions of the father I just understood - his reaction"

ok your not endorsing it fine.


why blame the parents ??

Bard

Originally posted by Difficult
Do you honestly believe that all those areas you mention are crime free?

crime free no

seriousness of the crimes alot less and the amount alot lot less.

ah right... it was your use of the words "how come none of this is going on in [those areas]" that threw me there ... :rolleyes:

Yeah crime happens everywhere. Yeah, it happens more in certain areas. Yeah, scum seems to attract scum and collect and stick in certain areas and not collect and stick in others. Why? does this surprise you?

why blame the parents ??

For one, because they raised the child.

Difficult

how many kids have you raised beard ?

at what age is the child raised ?

how do you watch a 15yr old 24 hours a day ?

be to harsh the child will go against you, not hard enough the child runs riot.

so if we blame the parents for being bad parents...someone must have raised them wrongly to become bad parents so we blame them ? and blame the parents who brought up the parents of the parents ? where does it the blame stop ?


if it's happening more in some areas what's going on ? all the bad parents just happened to move in on the same street ?

sceptre

Originally posted by Difficult
how come none of this is going on in foxrock ? blackrock ? kiliney ? malahide ? is it only working class parents that are bad parents ???

Can't speak for Dublin but I'll offer Castletroy in Limerick as an example. A few years ago there was an awful lot of trouble caused by a few gangs of roaming teenagers. A few students were beaten up by one gang over the course of over a year, another group were concentrating on breaking into houses.

Castletroy isn't a poor area - it's mostly middle class and students. All these (and I stress "all") kids came from middle-class homes. Meanwhile many of the parents wouldn't recognie what their children were up to until they were confronted with video evidence.

I'm not saying "blame the parents". However it's the duty of parents, where possible, to at least have some idea of where their children are at night.

It's not as black and white an issue as "do you want your children turning against you". Personally, if it was as clear-cut a choice as that, I'd rather my children resenting me for a few years than making the lives of others a living hell. My parents didn't do anything special with us - yet we were never a family that ran riot in our local town. We weren't poor, yet we weren't especially well-off either. The basic values they must have instilled in us about respecting other people and their property resulted in us becoming relatively respectful people.

It's not an issue of where the blame stops, Difficult - it's an issue of where the buck stops. And that's with the children and their parents.

Difficult

well i was a bit of a loose cannon when i was younger the last people i could blame for that is my parents, they could say whatever they wanted and do whatever they wanted, the next day i'd be out doing whatever i was doing at the time parents can only do so much, when i was 15 if i wanted to murder someone there wasn't a damn thing anyone could have done to stop it only me, and if i wanted to murder someone today what's to stop me ? only me. each person is different and each case is different and has to be taken on it's own merit. you can't put it down to oh he's just a "scumbag" or "where the hell was his parents" it doesn't work like that and it will take more than harsher policing to stop it.

Matfinn

Heres what i would do for anyone causing trouble

If anyone was in a fight, or a group od scumbags were involved in kicking the **** out of some poor fella, they would all go up in court and they would be sentenced to 2 years in jail. A second offence should land them in jail for 5 years, and a third for 10 years.

Powers for trying people as an adult should be set at an age of 14 and not 18, in the case of last weeks stabbing outside the UCI cinema, that kid should have been tried for cold blooded murder as an adult, and his accomplices should have been tried for accessory to murder.

Kids should be given something to so they dont hang around in these places looking for trouble. In fairness, I see alot of these young kids hanging around with nothing to do at all. I used to work in a petrol station behind the till, in a sleepy suburban Dublin town, and I would see all these kids just hanging around outside, shouting 'look at the tits on yer one' as someone walked by.

I am not a fascist. I would not like to have these kids tried in the first place, but something must be done abut this. I wish I could have all the answers, but it needs alot of thougnt.

Matt

Difficult

oh yeh locked them up with gangsters who know every trick in the book where heroin is more available than any street corner that will solve everything.


nothing can be done untill the root of these problems are looked into, nothing will change while there shoved into a corner and labled "scumbags"

sceptre

Take this the way it's intended, Difficult - as an honest query/question.

As you say, you were a bit of a hellraiser when you were younger and you obviously believe the fault lay with you rather than with your parents in any way.

Completely leaving aside the argument on what blame could/should lie with the parents for the moment, what, if anything, would have worked on you in your mid-teens to curb the behaviour?

I'm not prying into your private life or anything near that - I'm just wondering if you've any thoughts on it. Obviously the issue of kids roaming the streets is a complicated one without a quick answer so it doesn't weaken your case/point of view in any way if you don't have any quick answers. I'm just really interested to hear any you do have.

Difficult

hmm it's a great question actually. And to be honest unless i was brought up somewhere very remote i don't think anything would have changed me, i chose to do everything i did, i didn't do it because i wanted be "mad" i didn't do it because i was preasured into it i didn't do it because i was angry and needed anger managment sessions, some people at a young age find intrests in reading books listening to music horse riding arts and crafts.
creative activities i didn't and i don't think anything could have changed that, that's just who i was. i have no quick soloutions to the problems in dublin i don't think anyone has if they did they'd be in place, the only thing that changed me was myself.

this sounds like add for that "power to change" campaign

MrPudding

People seem to think that locking people up is the answer to all of societies problems. Newsflash....it isn't. Violence on the street is not a new problem, it is not a problem unique to Ireland either.

There are several problems with locking people up. Firstly, as difficult points out, you introduce people to more hardcore criminal elements. You run the risk of turning primary crime into secondary crime. Example, a teenager gets into a fight. This happens all the time. Two types of people could be involved, 1) Hardcore trouble maker or 2) Misguided kid. Now, putting the hardcore kid into prison might not change the outcome of his life because this is the kind of life he was leaning towards anyway. But in the case of the misguided kid, it could mean a complete change in his future. This could be someone in the wrong place at the wrong time or just someone hanging round with the wrong crowd. Maybe there is a chance that by himself, or with some punishment other than custodial, he wises up. By putting him in prison you reduce the chance that he will change. How? Firstly, you have compromised his ability to get a proper job & further, you have put him into an environment where he will learn other ways to "make a living."

Tackling crime is not easy. It is easy to say "lock em up" but what is the point if it doesn't work. Who like's to pay for something that doesn't work? I don't. If you lock everyone up we, the people not in prison, will be the people who pay and we will be throwing money down a bottomless pit. I understand the desire to see people who do bad thing punished, I have it too, but I really don’t think that prison is necessarily the answer.

What do we do? I don’t know. We have to look at the reasons for crime. I know this will make me sound like a bleeding heart liberalist, but I would prefer to see money being spent in areas with high crime rates to try to tackle the causes of this often casual crime. I think my money would be better spent there than keeping people in prison serving a life of crime apprenticeship.

dathi1

Singapore.

great place if you're not too keen on crime. Copy their system directly to eliminate scumbags and the scubag mindset which prevails amongst the parents of these "teenagers" which hang around O'Connell st etc.

dathi1

What do we do? I don’t know. We have to look at the reasons for crime. I know this will make me sound like a bleeding heart liberalist, but I would prefer to see money being spent in areas with high crime rates to try to tackle the causes of this often casual crime. I think my money would be better spent there than keeping people in prison serving a life of crime apprenticeship.

The reasons for crime isn't some complicated airy fairy spend the money on them and everything's fine. Johnner down the road will exploit you if you give him the chance. Johnner knows that he's excempt from justice because he's 15. Johnner even has a job after school so he's not out of pocket or socially disadvantaged. Johnner's father gives him bulls looks if he causes problems at home but as long as sky sports and the cans are beside him "everything's fine with our son"....and don't try to tell him differently.

MrPudding

Originally posted by dathi1
The reasons for crime isn't some complicated airy fairy spend the money on them and everything's fine. Johnner down the road will exploit you if you give him the chance. Johnner knows that he's excempt from justice because he's 15. Johnner even has a job after school so he's not out of pocket or socially disadvantaged. Johnner's father gives him bulls looks if he causes problems at home but as long as sky sports and the cans are beside him "everything's fine with our son"....and don't try to tell him differently.

And how will locking him up help? It will not cure him of his wicked ways. Prison, in a lot of cases, does not work. That is a fact. Why pump more money into something that does not work?

MrPudding

There are other ways;

This is UK but crime cares not for nationality

http://www.c-far.org.uk/pr.html

This is very interesting, again not specific to Ireland but still valid, it is quite long but woth the read.

http://www.justiceaction.org.au/MdRel/MR_archive/MR_202/Select_1.html

dathi1

And how will locking him up help? It will not cure him of his wicked ways. Prison, in a lot of cases, does not work. That is a fact. Why pump more money into something that does not work?

Reform the penal system.

Make it cheaper to run by adopting the Texan model of open military drill camp. (no talking to other prisoners etc)
Reward prisoners who follow the rules strictly and show signs of rehab. Use a combination of strict and reward style programs to make Johnner think about the world about him before he makes his next move. In most cases you will be left with a hardcore element who will need psychological coercion etc.

RainyDay

Make it cheaper to run by adopting the Texan model of open military drill camp. (no talking to other prisoners etc)

Thatcher tried this in the 80's in the UK - Remember the 'short, sharp shock' - It was an abysmal failure.