It may have come in with a bang but it went out with something of a whimper. The policing surge in Dublin’s city centre that began last August is over. The money is spent and there will not be any more forthcoming.
The brainchild of the Minster for Justice Helen McEntee, the surge followed a period of sustained political and public pressure on her after a series of violent attacks on members of the public in the centre of the city. They included a serious assault by a group of youths on an American tourist.
Some €10 million and roughly 240,000 hours of Garda overtime later, has anything changed? Is Dublin a safer place thanks to measures such as deploying the Garda Mounted Unit or pulling gardaí in from as far afield as Sligo to walk the streets of Dublin?
The answer would appear to be not really. Little has changed in terms of crime levels and it is arguable that there was no significant spike in city centre crime last year to begin with. Figures show that the number of assaults and public order offences in the first half of last year was roughly the same as the same period the previous year.
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The relatively sanguine comments coming from senior gardaí about what will happen to crime levels and policing post the surge also indicate that the increased garda presence may have been more about optics than anything else.
It is clear now – as indeed it was last August – that the Government and the Minister for Justice were bounced into responding to a perceived rise in crime in the city centre. Even a cursory analysis at the time would most likely have shown no such increase in the figures.
Nevertheless, the political pressure on McEntee last summer was real. At one stage embassies started to warn citizens about the dangers of venturing into Dublin city centre. And parts of Dublin city centre were and remain locations for drug-taking and many feel like “no-go” areas for the public after dark.
The presence of additional gardaí on the streets of the capital undoubtedly reassured the public. It may not have prevented the riot in the city centre last November but the police presence in its aftermath helped things return to normal and build public confidence.
From the Government perspective the €10 million may be considered money well spent if it left people feeling safer about living, visiting, working and shopping in the centre of Dublin. The danger is that, in the absence of any detailed analysis of the true costs and benefits of the surge, it will simply be repeated the next time the Government finds itself on the rack over crime in the centre of Dublin.
Meanwhile, the underlying social problems and the question of how to address them – including via policing policy but also more widely – will remain.