It was long the convention that members of An Garda Síochána said very little and wrote even less about their policing careers once they had retired. Decades of experience, wisdom and knowledge consequently went with them to the grave. Happily this has started to change in recent years and there is now a modest but growing library of memoirs from men (and one or two women) who have served the State in the uniform of its national police and security service.
Gill Books bring us two new additions to the list in their current catalogue. Former Assistant Commissioner John O’Driscoll, who died last month, offers a unique perspective from the echelons of senior leadership. At the other end of the organisational spectrum, Ciaran Prior, a regionally based crime scene investigator, narrates a lifetime of on-the-ground police work defined by tragedy, loss, violence and the constant proximity of death. It too is a unique contribution, coming from within this specialised corps, identifiable at crime scenes by their white, hooded suits and their mysterious kitbags. Both authors, incidentally, are second-generation gardaí, their respective fathers having served as detectives.
For the greater part of the past decade, John O’Driscoll was the public face of the Garda’s response to organised crime. To him more than to any other senior police officer can credit be attributed for the disempowering of the big criminal organisations whose family names became bywords in the aftermath of the Regency Hotel shootings of February 2016. O’Driscoll describes how the gardaí, in collaboration with law-enforcement agencies in Europe and North America, set about dismantling the operations and the assets of the Kinahan organisation. The processes are clinical and logical. The author might be describing how a multinational business enterprise pushed a rival to the wall and broke it there.
In parallel, he describes how the gardaí developed and evolved effective new policies to reduce or prevent gangland murders, requiring significant reallocation of resources and a redefinition of priorities at the highest level. O’Driscoll’s logic was simple and compelling. It costs less to prevent murders by surveillance, interception and disruption of criminal planning than it does to investigate and try to solve them after they actually happen.
On Duty: Reflections on a Life in the Guards by John O’Driscoll & Traces of Truth by Ciaran Prior: two sides of the beat
How Painting Happens (and why it matters) by Martin Gayford: unlocking the puzzles of art
The mystery Irish woman who lived at the crossroads of revolutionary history
Ireland’s most infamous unsolved murder: a massacre intended to strike fear into the hearts of Catholics
Insights such as this into the formulation of policing policy are rare and represent an important contribution to any public conversation around the criminal justice system. Twenty-first-century policing policy, as described here, cannot be merely reactive to events as they unfold but must anticipate and get in advance of them.
O’Driscoll’s top-down perspective contrasts with Ciaran Prior’s memoir of his work, first as a young guard assigned to uniformed duties in the Dublin suburbs and later as a crimes scene investigator (CSI) working out of Roscommon.
His CSI role is immersive, the work defined by events that are tragic, violent and sad. He frames his garda persona within his own life story. We meet a sensitive boy, raised in a small town in a loving family that encounters its own share of grief and loss. The deaths of relatives and neighbours affect him deeply, imparting an early awareness of human mortality. The fragility of life, the thin line that divides the living and the dead, the mystery of death itself, are a constant backdrop to the narrative. Perhaps not surprisingly, on retirement, he embarks on a mystical journey to India. But even there, in the midst of pilgrimage, there is death and tragedy in the form of a traffic mishap that leaves an Indian woman dead on the dusty road before his eyes.
The establishment of divisional CSI teams came about after the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder in west Cork and the Donegal garda scandals of the late 1990s. The Cork murder in particular highlighted the need for the preservation and swift, skilled examination of crime scenes.
Prior takes his reader to the lonely cottages of elderly farmers and the drab apartments of poor immigrants where death has visited in circumstances that may give cause for suspicion. His methodology is painstaking but reverent and respectful of the often pitiable human stories that are revealed. It is clear, nonetheless, that the work is taking a cumulative toll. There is no reluctance to let it go when his years of service make him eligible for pension. Any regret is to do with parting from colleagues and companions. Roscommon Garda Division has seen three serving gardaí murdered in living memory, The author served with the most recent of these, Detective Colm Horkan, murdered in Castlerea in June 2020 and they were close friends.
The approaches of these two former Garda authors are very different. But there are important points of commonality. Both narratives serve to highlight the pernicious and devastating effects of the illegal drugs trade in Irish society. And both underscore the importance of values, courage and humanity in contemporary policing.
Conor Brady is a former Editor of The Irish Times
