Covid-19: Policing Authority not in favour of Garda role in hotel quarantine

The Policing Authority has said it is not in favour of using any Garda members for security or enforcement purposes at the mandatory hotel quarantining being introduced for newly arrived international passengers into the Republic.

Authority chairman Bob Collins, the former director general of RTÉ, was incredulous some people would insist on taking foreign holidays during the pandemic while others were committed to adhering to all of the public health regulations and advice.

“The extent of non-essential international travel reflected a sharp disparity between the perceived freedoms for some and the careful and diligent adherence to the rules and the public health advice on the part of the great majority,” he said.

The authority said althouhgh the Garda “may have a role in terms of responding to incidents at such facilities, the transporting of persons to these and supervision of persons staying at these facilities may not be an appropriate use of Garda resources”.

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On the issue of assaults, including coughing and spitting, on Garda members during the pandemic, the Policing Authority welcomed the sustained fall in the number of times spit hoods – placed over a person’s head to prevent spitting — were used on suspects. The hoods were used just twice last month.

However, the authority said it had submitted observations last August about spit hoods to the Garda for a review that was being compiled within the force but that no evaluation of the hoods, or any updates, had been produced to date.

The authority welcomed the fact trainee Garda Reserve members had recently been attested in a fast-track process and were being given the power of arrest for the first time in the pandemic.

The authority said the Covid-19 pandemic through 2020 had been a very challenging period for the Garda and public alike in terms of the criminal justice system, with the regulations changing very frequently and more than 50 statutory instruments published last year.

The enforcement regime had intensified significantly since the start of this year, when on-the-spot fines for Covid-19 breaches were introduced, but other more regular forms of policing have not been undermined, the authority said.

“Arrests, summonses or charges are at their highest level since policing of the emergency began,” the authority said of traditional, non-pandemic related, Garda activity.

The level of enforcement incidents last year was highest in April, with 192 cases, and was lowest in June with just 26 enforcement actions by the Garda related to the pandemic. By December, the number of enforcement actions was 122, but that increased sharply to 4,218 in January after on-the-spot fines became operational and in the first 11 days of February some 1,711 enforcement actions had been taken.

The vast majority of all fines issued, at 85 per cent, were for making non-essential journeys, with much smaller numbers issue for non-wearing of face masks, organising events, attending events and international travel, the latter at just over 2 per cent of all fines.

However, while a major pandemic policing operation continued, the number of checkpoints carried out in January, at 6,500 per week, was much lower than in May, at 9,500 per week. The authority added when it had consulted with community groups it found that young children were being still recruited into the drugs trade, even though that pressure was usually applied on them on their way to schools, which were now closed.

The authority added that in its detailed engagement with a homelessness NGO in Dublin, that organisation supported the Garda’s removal of homeless people’s tents from locations in the city centre. It supported the removal of these tents because of “the vulnerability of the homeless and the potential for exploitation in terms of drug abuse and sexual crime while homeless people live in tents”.

The homelessness NGO also told the Policing Authority that Garda members contacted it out about homeless people they encountered on the streets, which enabled NGOs to aid those people.