Garda complaints board report `disgraceful'

The Garda News, the publication of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI), has condemned as "disgraceful" the recently-published annual report of the Garda Siochana Complaints Board.

An editorial in the latest edition of the magazine said the board appeared, in its report, "to concentrate on its annual plea for more resources and power rather than presenting a dispassionate, objective, review of the state of the police complaints system in this country".

The editorial criticised the board's use of "anecdotal" allegations and said "no attempt" was made to provide balance.

"The cases are stated in such black-and-white terms that they were a boon to the media at the time of the report's issue and papers and electronic media were full of the details of excessive force, intimidating behaviour, etc. The overall impression given was of a force which is no longer under control and which was indulging in an orgy of violence and threatening behaviour. No attempt was made to point out that the incidents represented only a very tiny fraction of the vast number of operations carried out by An Garda Siochana in any one year.

"In its anxiety to bolster its case for more resources the board has also over-reached itself in many other areas, offering gratuitous insults to many people of high integrity and using questionable public relations messages to `sell' its message to the public via the media."

The report for 1999, published last June, cited "a serious lack of confidence" in the complaints system and said there were "grave concerns" that "pressure may have been put on complainants by members of the Garda Siochana to drop their complaints" in certain cases.

The editorial noted that the AGSI annually pointed out that frivolous or vexatious complaints formed a high percentage of the overall cases. "In 1999, they numbered 140 or 27.7 per cent of the total complaints which were ruled to be inadmissible. Yet the report, as usual, contains not one word about what the board did about these complaints - were any of them referred to the DPP, for instance?"

A disclaimer with the magazine said the views expressed did not necessarily represent those of the AGSI or the Garda Siochana.

Rejecting the criticism, the complaints board said in a statement yesterday it considered its report "commented in an objective and balanced fashion on the current complaints system".