Tánaiste Leo Varadkar will become Taoiseach again on 17th December. In the course of what was publicised as an exclusive media interview outlining his priorities when he resumes the office of Taoiseach, when was asked in the wake of the brutal assault on Gardai in west Dublin whether he favoured arming the Gardai, he said that he would “absolutely” favour doing so if the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris requested it. If such a request were made by “the Commissioner and his team”, Varadkar said he certainly would not “block it”. He added that arming the Gardai should be a “call” for the Commissioner “rather than politicians”.
Starting with the last point, it is surprising and concerning that the next Taoiseach should believe (if he really does believe it) that the decision to arm the Gardai is not a call for politicians to make. I am afraid that such a statement underlines what is becoming an increasingly worrying tendency among some politicians to abdicate responsibility in deciding controversial issues to outside officeholders or bodies rather than insist on the right of democratically elected politicians to decide them.
It may get you past a difficult interview question to say that arming the Gardai is a “call” for the Commissioner to make. It may lend a phony degree of earnestness to condemnation of the brutality of the assaults on members of the force. It may even say to unthinking people that he is only held back from arming the Gardai by a judgment call not yet made by the Commissioner. But the remarks were at very best ill-judged and at worst irresponsible in the sense that the decision is one where responsibility must lie exclusively with our elected politicians and the elected government.
I have the height of respect for Drew Harris and I have consistently publicly supported his reforms. But it’s not his “call” in any sense. He may express his views (whatever they may be) or give advice on the matter to Government or to the Minister or to the governing institutions of An Garda Siochána. But any suggestion that he bears responsibility for such a decision is both unfair and wrong. It risks dragging him into wholly unnecessary controversy.
And, by the way, the decision is very definitely a matter for the elected Oireachtas and Government, and not one for any so-called “independent” authority to make either.
But on the broader issue of arming the Gardai, there is every reason not to do so. A largely unarmed policing strategy has served Ireland very well for a century now. It is the embodiment of the idea of policing by consent.
That is not to say that Gardai should not be adequately equipped with appropriate non-lethal means in terms of defensive and enforcement clothing and devices to suppress disorder and enforce the law. In my boyhood, Gardai on the beat in Dublin still had hefty, impressive-looking baton cases on their belts. They had the means to defend themselves.
Nowadays, the same purpose may be better served by pepper-sprays, tasers (in some cases), and concealed batons. It may even be that night-sticks should be carried where that is the judgment of local police management. But we have to avoid unnecessarily giving the public any impression that Gardai routinely resemble Robocop. That is not the image we need. It doesn’t foster the relationship that underlies policing by consent.
Difficult though that policy may be, it has served us well. Arming the Gardai would, in my view, escalate the danger to their lives rather than reducing it. Armed Garda detectives have sadly borne a greater share of lethal violence proportionately when compared with their unarmed uniformed colleagues.
The issue of body-camera use is currently under discussion with opinion divided. On balance, I favour their use in some contexts.
But we have to look to foreign experience of policing with firearms to gain a perspective. The US experience is not one which would encourage most people to support have every Garda tote a fire-arm – especially if the motive was to discourage non-lethal assaults on Gardai.
It is almost two years now since George Nkencho was shot dead by armed Gardai in west Dublin. We are led to believe that this tragic matter is being investigated by GSOC. Without prejudging that rather tardy investigation, it does appear that a psychiatrically ill man brandishing a knife was pursued by armed Gardai and shot dead. Would that have happened if the Gardai involved were unarmed? Would something worse have happened if he had not been shot? Was a different and better outcome possible? We have yet to learn the full facts and all versions of that event.
But it does raise the legitimate question as to whether such killings would become more likely if every member of the Gardai routinely carried a fire-arm.
