JUST over one crime per day is committed on average on O'Connell street, a senior Garda officer has said.
Mr Tom King, Assistant Garda Commissioner responsible for the Dublin area, said the media had promoted a misleading impression of the street as a dangerous place.
"O'Connell Street is a far better place than the media would imply that it is," he said. He added that citizens of Dublin could "take more pride" in the street.
Mr King told RTE radio yesterday that 466 crimes on the street were reported to the Garda last year. "That's an average of just over one per day," he said. "This year, so far, it's running at that average.
Later in the interview he said: "We still have only one crime per day in the area of O'Connell street."
Mr King said each crime affects only one person, and with about a half a million people in the street every day, the level of daily crime there had been misrepresented.
"If you put those two figures together - a half a million people one way or another passing through, one person of that half million being affected by crime - I think the perception is quite different to the reality."
He said there was a "quite considerable strength of Garda presence at all times on O'Connell Street," consisting of more than 12 officers at any time of the day.
"We are quite happy that O'Connell Street is and has been policed quite effectively," he said. O'Connell Street was "probably one of the safest streets in the city of Dublin at this time".
He added that, according to his figures, crime in the area generally had fallen 10 per cent so far this year, with a 14 per cent drop in the area south of the Liffey.
He acknowledged that people might not be reporting crimes they witness, and said he would regret it if this was the case. But he said the main problem appeared to be "a perceived concern" among shopkeepers and other citizens about the level of crime in the street.
He said if there was such a perceived concern "then there's an actual concern from the point of view of the citizen and I think that perhaps we need to do a bit more work dealing with them.
"O'Connell Street at this moment in time does not deserve some of the headlines in the tabloids, let's call them, and certainly from the point of views of the citizens of Dublin 1 think they can take more pride in their street than the tabloids give them credit for," he said.
Asked about drug dealing around the Anna Livia fountain in the centre of the street, Mr King said drug addicts congregated at the fountain seeking drugs but were unable to buy any there.
"It's a focal point for the last number of weeks for people who are seeking drugs. Not drug dealing, because there is not the drugs to deal in. They're disenchanted people, they're out of focus, they're going around looking for a fix, it's not available to them there because we have a strong presence of gardai," he said. He said the force was "a victim of our own success" because its anti drug initiative, Operation Dochas, had led to people congregating in the city centre seeking drugs.
Mr King was not available to comment to The Irish Times later.