A year of crime: Violence inflicted on young and old alike

2017 was dominated by knives, rural crime, burglaries and gangland feuds, reports Security Correspondent Cormac O’Keeffe.

A year of crime: Violence inflicted on young and old alike

2017 was dominated by knives, rural crime, burglaries and gangland feuds, reports Security Correspondent Cormac O’Keeffe.

It was a year that started and ended with knives. It was a year dominated by rural crime, aggravated burglaries, gangland feuds, and sexual and domestic violence. The violence was often inflicted on the vulnerable, from the very young to the very old.

Knives and Attacks

- The first day of 2017 set a gruesome tone for the year when an elderly woman was knifed on her own doorstep. Bridie Smith, 72, was stabbed when she opened the door of her house on Oranmore Rd, Ballyfermot, west Dublin, on the morning of New Year’s Day. Detectives were investigating if the shocking attack was linked to an ongoing local feud.

- A few days later a boy of 16 was fatally stabbed in Tallaght. The murder of Reece Cullen exposed an ongoing issue of knife crime in local communities. Cullen’s suspected killer is even younger than the victim. Detectives have made multiple arrests at different stages during the year and hope to make a breakthrough.

Attacks on vulnerable

- In February, Paddy Lyons, 90, suffered a violent death at his rural home in Ballysaggart, Lismore, Co Waterford. A man has been charged with his murder.

- The following month, a 10-week-old baby suffered serious injuries in Co Louth, and remains under 24-hour-care. Gardaí have made progress in that investigation.

- Also in March, Nicola Collins, 38, a mother of three, was found dead with head injuries at her flat in Farranree, Cork.

A man has been charged with her murder.

- In April, a great-grandmother was shot in an attack in Monkstown, South Co Dublin.

- The reality of rural crime was again brought into focus in May when Jimmy Campion, 94, was beaten around the head by burglars in front of his wife Maura, 87. The attack happened at their cottage on Old Dublin Rd, Roscrea, Co Tipperary.

- The issue of violence in the home was raised in May by Women’s Aid in its annual report, which included details of more than 180 disclosures of physical and sexual abuse of children, and 18 cases of child abduction. There were a further 3,500 cases of emotional abuse of children disclosed during 2016.

- Amid seemingly constant reports of attacks against women, both in the home and on the street, there was a series of high-profile assaults in the course of a few weeks in June and July.

In June, a woman in her 50s was beaten unconscious in a ferocious assault on Old Pollerton Rd in Carlow.

Also in June, the dismembered remains of Patricia O’Connor, 61, were found scattered over a Wicklow roadside. A man was has been charged in relation to that investigation.

The following month, a Spanish student aged 18 was falsely imprisoned and raped in Ringsend, south Dublin.

A man is before the courts.

Also in July, Omar Omram, 3, was stabbed to death in Kimmage, South Dublin. His mother has been charged with his murder.

- Aggravated burglaries — appropriately called home invasions in the US — continued to shock throughout the rest of the year, with a number of outrages in November and December, including the murder of Rose Hanrahan, 78, in Limerick.

Gangland crime

- The so-called Kinahan-Hutch feud had dominated gangland crime throughout 2016. But gardaí managed to keep a lid on the killings this year since the December murder of Noel ‘Duck Egg’ Kirwan in Clondalkin. Not that the Kinahan cartel wasn’t trying to continue the onslaught.

Last May, a senior Hutch figure, James Gately, narrowly escaped with his life, thanks to a bulletproof vest, when he was shot five times at a service station in north Dublin.

The first feud murder of the year came at the end of May, bringing to 12 the number of murders linked to the feud. Michael Keogh was killed at an underground car park in Dublin’s north inner city by the Hutch group — the second murder by it, compared to 10 at the hands of the cartel.

In early December the Kinahan cartel gunned down Kane McCormack, son of Noel Kirwan. The shooting was almost a year on from his dad’s murder.

Specialist Garda units and Operation Hybrid managed to limit the bloodshed and by September, Assistant Commissioner for Special Crime Operations, John O’Driscoll, said they had prevented 40 attempted murders linked to the feud. This was due to the work of the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau, the Armed Support Unit patrols and the Emergency Response Unit.

Since the very start of the year, Garda units have scored significant successes against serious organised crime, particularly the Kinahan cartel.

- On January 20, the DOCB was involved in the seizure of 1.8 tonnes of cannabis herb (street value €37m) at Dublin Port — the biggest inland haul of the drug in 20 years. Four days later, the DOCB seized 15 firearms, including armed weapons, at Greenogue Industrial Estate, west Dublin and confiscated €500,000. And four days after that, gardaí seized 30kg of heroin and cocaine, an assault rifle and ammo in a house in Sallins, Co Kildare.

- In early April, the DOCB seized 20kg of cocaine and parts of semi-automatic weapons in Artane, north Dublin. In July, the DOCB uncovered 200kg of cannabis herb and 3kg of heroin in west Dublin.

Subsequently, a high-profile hit team was intercepted and this was followed in November by an international Dutch-Irish operation which involved 13 arrests, with senior cartel members, and the seizure of around €10m worth of drugs.

Last month, a senior officer told the Irish Examiner that the cartel is “running out of people” to run its business in Ireland.

And there is more to come, as CAB’s efforts to confiscate the homes of the leadership of the cartel in Ireland progresses through the High Court.

- On a side note, but one highlighting both the difficulty in tackling gang bosses and the doggedness of gardaí, former crime chief John Gilligan was eventually booted out of his final properties after he exhausted all of his multitude of legal challenges against the efforts of the CAB.

The threat from gangland spread wider than the Kinahan gang this year, with feuds claiming lives and threatening lives in north Clondalkin in west Dublin and Finglas and Ballymun in north Dublin.

- A feud in Ballymun claimed the lives of innocent mum-of-six Antoinette Corbally and friend Clinton Shannon last August, when they were shot dead in the botched attack aimed at a local criminal.

- The murder of James Tighe in Coolock, north Dublin, in October, may be linked to the feud but could also be the result of other motives.

Back in September, two people were gunned down in a Clondalkin feud, resulting in the death of John Gibson at Citywest Shopping Centre and Darragh Nugent in Ronanstown the week previously, by a major criminal outfit linked to the Kinahan cartel.

Darragh Nugent, left, was murdered in Clondalkin, and his friend John Gibson, a fitness instructor, was shot in the head as he sat in his car close to the Citywest Shopping Centre.
Darragh Nugent, left, was murdered in Clondalkin, and his friend John Gibson, a fitness instructor, was shot in the head as he sat in his car close to the Citywest Shopping Centre.

Community intimidation

At the time, community workers in Clondalkin said they feared for the safety of locals and called on the State to launch a concerted effort to ‘break’ the power of gangs.

One community source said: “The impact on children in the area, when someone is shot dead in their estate — the normalisation of it. They think that’s what you do — you just blow him away.” He said local Criminal Assets Bureaux were needed to target young men driving “flashy cars, with the nice apartment, and shopping in New York”.

“They have the biggest impact on the local community. The State needs to take these on.”

And this remains part of a wider issue that is yet to be addressed comprehensively. It is something that drug activists and groups have been highlighting for years and the neglect of it enabled the likes of the Kinahan bosses in Crumlin to assemble vast wealth and power. As one local worker told the Irish Examiner years before the feud kicked off, these gangs “intimidated entire communities” into silence.

- Back in July, the Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign made its submission to the new National Drugs Strategy (NDS). It said that anti-social behaviour, drug debt intimidation, open dealing, and gangland violence were undermining the ability of heavily disadvantaged communities to respond.

It called for a concerted reinvestment by the State in local drug structures —structures which had been decimated by a cumulative 37% cut in funding over a six-year period.

The submission expressed concern at the “normalisation” of drug use and drug dealing, the day-to-day social nuisance caused and a reluctance by locals to use community spaces such as parks. It said that significant levels of intimidation and fear keep “communities quiet and passive”.

It added: “This ‘normalisation’ has a huge negative impact on community spirit and pride, community relationships and social networks, social capital, and community resilience, and as a result undermines the community’s capacity to engage and respond.”

The new NDS did contain commitments in relation to dealing with intimidation by gangs, but Susan Collins of Addiction Response Crumlin said they had fought hard to get specific actions on it included.

She said resources were key and that this was needed to put trained community workers on the street and to fund more family support workers. She said “communities were being intimidated” and that resources need to be spent on community policing.

This latter issue — community policing — remains a fundamental issue particularly in those disadvantaged communities affected by anti-social behaviour, the drug trade, and the allure of gangs for vulnerable young people.

It is as big an issue as police visibility is in rural areas, but does not get the same recognition.

Garda associations have said that there aren’t the numbers on the ground to staff regular units and community policing. While feud-affected communities have the welcome presence of the high-visibility Armed Support Unit and checkpoints, they don’t have the ‘normal’ preventative community policing to reassure locals and try to build up relationships with young people, boys in particular.

Last October, this newspaper reported that a Health Research Board study found gangs were operating a “zero tolerance” approach to all drug debts, no matter how small, and inflicting levels of violence up to and including murder.

Gardaí and community leaders told the HRB that this was to “set an example” to everyone in local communities.

Explaining the insidious nature of drug debts, the report said: “When demands for repayment cannot be met solely by cash, the indebted are sometimes forced to deal, hold, or transport drugs, to hold or hide weapons, to engage in sexual acts or prostitution, or to perform violent acts on orders from dealers.”

Children suffering

Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Limerick extended an initial groundbreaking study they conducted on children and criminal gangs.

The research by Dr Catherine Naughton and Dr Sean Redmond of UL School of Law found that children, some aged under 12, are being groomed into local gangs across the country.

Dr Redmond said information provided by the 107 Juvenile Liaison Officers in the country gave “clear evidence” that the profiles of children involved in serious crime were not just confined to large urban areas. “Children are being groomed into crime by predatory adults and, while relatively small in number, a pattern can be seen across the country.”

Dr Geoffrey Shannon, the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, said that his most recent report made his concerns clear about the problem of children being groomed by adult criminals in Ireland: “We need to act simultaneously on targeting adult groomers for attention while at the same time providing safe and realistic options for children to escape these negative influences,” he said.

Dr Shannon called for a new ‘Fagin’s Law’ to create an offence of grooming children to carry out offences on behalf of an adult.

- Since November, there has been a large number of shootings in which teenagers and children have been caught up. A 19-year-old was left fighting for life after a bullet was lodged in the back of his head in a shooting in Ronanstown. Sources believe it is linked to the drugs trade. In the same weekend, another teen was injured in a shooting in Ballymun, while a youth in his 20s was shot in Athlone. Also in November, a teenager was arrested in relation to the seizure of firearms at his home in Finglas.

Not only are children being lured into the criminal underworld, but they get caught up in feuds between adults. This month, an eight-month-old baby was left with shotgun pellets in his leg after a gun attack in Parlickstown Gardens, Mulhuddart, north-west Dublin. The child’s mother and uncle were also injured. A man has been charged.

Arthur Collins, grandfather to the eight-month-old baby who was injured in a shooting in Parlickstown Gardens in Mulhuddart, Dublin, on December 11. The child’s mother and uncle were also injured.
Arthur Collins, grandfather to the eight-month-old baby who was injured in a shooting in Parlickstown Gardens in Mulhuddart, Dublin, on December 11. The child’s mother and uncle were also injured.

In the same month, a member of the Garda Emergency Response Unit was shot in the arm during a raid on a house in Ballymun. An 18-year-old occupant of the house was shot in return.

This happened the day before An Garda Síochána’s highest honour for bravery was posthumously awarded to murdered Garda Tony Golden. He was shot dead by Adrian Crevan Mackin when he went to the aid of Mackin’s then-girlfriend and domestic abuse victim, Siobhan Phillips, who was also seriously injured in the October 2015 shooting.

An extreme form of domestic violence was described the week before Christmas at Cavan Courthouse at the inquests into the deaths of Clodagh Hawe and her children, Liam, 13; Niall, 11; and Ryan, 6, murdered by their father Alan Hawe at the family home in Ballyjamesduff in August 2016.

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