Garda preparedness for mass shootings - Glenties incident (2020)

As i said , Regional . many areas covered by these regions are vast , up to and including 2 hours travel time even at speed. if there happens to be units working at all. some times cover is provided by a neighboring region making the problem worse. Example , Aughrim or glendalough country wicklow is covered by ASU from mullingar or newbridge. how long would that take at 5 pm on a friday ?ASU are never ever he first on scene hence the "support" in their name .

once again i m talking about regular uniform members already providing 24/7 cover in districts they know with people they know trained and equipped to a acceptable standard awailabe in a emergence situation that required a rapid reaction as was once the case when it was S&W 38s and uzis . and the cost was the issue , retaining and ammo. management felt it was a waste of money post good friday agreement.

DDU will be disarmed eventually leaving the public and gardai even more vulnerable unless they happen to have a ASU nearby.

Cavan ASU covers monaghan also ? parts of it are more than a hour away . thats a long time if some one is shooting at you.

Yes ASU can be a good thing but the retention of a local resource to respond to something like this incident would also be good , and the defining factor that means its not is cost

Apologies I took you up a bit wrong. Yes it's always something I have in the front of my mind when taking a shot, bullets can go some distance. Even the 22LR can kill at some distance, warning it's a bit redneck!:

no sure why you keep ignoring the points im making.

How long would you say is an acceptable time to wait for armed back up in an incident where shots are being fired ?

At most two armed ddu working with 9mm sigs and minimal training and basic firearms due to political and economic concerns rather than public safety ones . you would be assuming of course no one is on leave in court or out of the district in enquiries or positions are unfilled because of personnel shortages , saying that realistically much of the time there is simply no armed cover outside dublin . Its taken 3 years for AGS to start to bring ASU units up to strength and they are still at least another year if not two away from achieving that thinly spread cover.

Acceptable wait time? About the same as the acceptable wait time for an ambulance. The further one goes from population centers the less people there are, the worse the roads get, the less chance there is of an incident. The law of diminishing returns and the opportunity cost forgone mean it's a waste to spend the money to set up the structures to be able to put boots on the ground in 5/10/20/30 mins in somewhere out of the way.

from what ive seen first hand I disagree , the previous arrangement worked much better. Yes its impossible to cover every village and lane in Ireland. Centralizing resources like admin or non responsive units like Fraud EMU or SOC makes sense, but placing a responsive unit a hundred miles away from a possible incident and removing the ability of local resources to defend themselves or intervene in a armed incident only puts people at risk.

AGS seem happy to take the advice and direction of the multiple oversight and interest groups who have no experience or understanding of the actual issues but have a political or economic agenda to the determent of policing and justice.

I mentioned the ambulance service as an example because as you said it's more widely used, yet the wait times we accept are crazy. If we cannot service the country properly then I'm in agreement, every station should be able to put out a level of force to deal with a shooter. Every station is a bit much but the more remote the location the more need for a low level station to be able to deal with an issue.

Having said all that at the moment from knowing lads in the job, even in bigger towns they have to prioritize serious incidents because they don't have the bodies to attend all emergency calls. For example in my town of 20K people a decent row in the town coupled with two domestics and some poor woman is going to be at the wrong end of a battering before the Gardaí can attend.

Aw to be fair specialized firearms units arent in small stations or district stations or even divisional stations, Regional resource when a region can cover a stupid area and population. AGS have poor resource which they use badly because of poor leadership at the top and political pressure from people who only care about themselves and or don't understand the reality of the world outside their own sanatised bubble, while at the same time ignoring people who they expect to do a job with one hand and no resource.

its amazing it hasn't cost lives and people should know how bad the situation really is as its the only way it will improve

As a law abiding gun owner, I'd be happy for that d1ckhead to get 20 years. He won't, but I'd love to see it.

Going to bet there is no objection to this lad getting his licence renewed either. Complete joke.

this how in heavens name can you be allowed to go to the other end of the country on a hunting trip. you should have to report to the garda and have secure lock up for firearms at the minimum imho.

might not have stopped this but still.

I've seen people with rifles walking round places where theres lots of scattered houses tracking deer.

just wondered how it worked - obviously just land in with your gun and start shooting.

oh dont know much about gun licenses but thought part of the license was they were kept in a locked cabinet when not in use in a specific location.

the stag was in the field next to the road, guy looked pretty sheepish when I cycled past. he wasnt actually aiming at the point !