Preliminary Garda figures for the first nine days of Operation Encounter, a new crackdown on street crime, have revealed that 2,353 arrests were made.
Operation Encounter began on February 23rd as a measure to deal with public order issues "on the ground", Commissioner Pat Byrne said yesterday at the Garda College in Templemore. He was presenting degrees in police management to 15 garda officers.
He said one of the issues he would be raising with the Minister for Justice was the gardaí's lack of power to detain people who are disorderly but not drunk. They could be arrested and charged but then had to be released. "The power to detain people who are drunk is available to us.
"But we don't have the same power, and we have lost on a number of occasions around the country, where we detain people who are very disorderly. That can be a short, sharp lesson to somebody if we are in a position to detain people in a Garda station."
Proposed legislation for increasing Garda powers is being examined by the Government.
Commissioner Byrne said he was pleased with the results so far from Operation Encounter, which had involved the amalgamation of a number of divisional programmes into a national framework. "It is a clear indication of the activity and the performance of the members working on the ground doing everything they possibly can to deal with this particular problem."
The biggest number of arrests, some 973, took place under section 4 of the Public Order Act, which covers drunk and disorderly behaviour.
Commissioner Byrne said one focus was on the activities of certain off-licences. "I do not think it is any longer acceptable that members of the gardaí have to deal with issues happening on the street emanating from particular licensed premises", he said.
The figures show there were 44 detections for the purchase and consumption of drink by juveniles, 12 for selling drink to under-18s, and 10 for providing drink to under-18s. There were 600 detections of people engaging in threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour, 253 for failing to comply with a Garda direction and 199 for disorderly conduct.
There were seven detections for assault causing serious harm, 78 for assaults causing harm and 171 for minor assaults.
Public order was a continuous problem, Commissioner Byrne added, and the operation would continue for as long as needed. But the problem was one which could not be solved by the gardaí alone.
"Unfortunately there is an attitude out there with some people who just resent being told to go home when they are drunk and disorderly, or told to desist from a particular type of behaviour and then it leads to them being arrested and charged afterwards."