Number of guns seized by Garda falls significantly

The number of firearms seized by the Garda’s specialist anti-gang unit, and the number of gangland killings they have prevented through direct intervention, has reduced significantly amid an unprecedented decline in gun crime.

The Garda’s Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (DOCB) has been at the forefront of anti-gangland operations since its inception almost a decade ago, including leading the force’s operations against the rival factions involved in the Kinahan-Hutch feud.

The first murder as part of that feud occurred within six months of DOCB being launched, which was followed by an intense round of fatal shootings and attempted murders after the 2016 Regency Hotel attack in Dublin targeting Daniel Kinahan.

But while 2016 and the years that followed marked a period of intense activity by the bureau, that has now been replaced by a period of less frequent serious gun attacks being carried out by smaller and less structured gangs.

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Figures obtained The Irish Times show that last year, for example, DOCB seized nine firearms. That compares with 22 firearms in 2018, and 29 guns in 2017.

Also last year, the bureau was forced to intervene in three so-called “threat to life” incidents, meaning a gangland killing about to take place. That compares with 26 such incidents in 2017, and 13 in 2018.

While there were five gangland murders last year, up from two in 2021, the number of gun killings is much smaller compared with the period at the start of the Kinahan-Hutch feud, and during the latter years of the Celtic Tiger drugs boom, when gang-related gun murders exceeded 20 per year at times.

Assistant Commissioner Justin Kelly, who is in charge of the Organised & Serious Crime section of the Garda, confirmed the “significant upsurge” in gangland activity from 2016 had now been displaced by an evolving underworld scene, with few serious incidents being perpetrated by smaller and less organised gangs.

“A lot of our work and resources went towards threat to life-type operations,” he said of the force’s activities in the period after 2016. “But that has begun to recede. Naturally, we can’t take our foot off the pedal for any of that. So we keep resources focused on those organised criminal groups. But the numbers of those types of operations are now significantly reduced and that’s a particular development of note.

“What we did see was very structured groups, and some of them are controlled from outside this jurisdiction,” he said of 2016 and the period immediately following. “(They are) highly organised; a lot of planning, preparation and a lot of money put behind some of their homicides. But we’ve seen a reduction in that. While we still see homicides in that area, we’ve seen less structured ones, particularly in the last number of months.”

He said the Garda’s anti-drugs operations “continue apace”, with some very significant seizures of drugs of late as well as the discovery of some “drug distribution centres”.

Speaking to the Policing Authority recently, he added the Garda was now dealing with organised crime gangs engaged in new types of crimes or in offence-types that have surged in recent years. Much of that activity was cyber-enabled and also involved international gangs.

“Obviously we’ve seen significant increases in cyber-enabled crime, which we previously didn’t have, and we’ve had to significantly pivotal resources in relation to that,” he said.

One relatively new crime type was sextortion, involving the blackmailing of people who had been tricked by fraudsters into sending intimate images of themselves. Frauds were also increasing and had now become “more complex and better organised”. These were often run by international gangs with access to leading technical knowledge.