Garda Commissioner Mr Pat Byrne's handsome features smiled with their customary charm from out of a soft-focus newspaper interview he gave recently. All's well with the world and the Garda Síochána: relations between the public and the force are thriving. The Commissioner's fine figure is a regular sight at various launches and public occasions, giving him a higher profile than any commissioner to date. Inauguration of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, anniversary celebrations for Women's Aid? Welcome, Commissioner. Cameras roll.
But Byrne was nowhere to be seen this week. The public servant, who always finds the right word or phrase to reassure, found no reason to appear on television and speak directly to citizens about what happened in Dame Street on Monday night. The Commissioner usually likes to reassure citizens.
He told them they needn't worry about Garda practices when gardaí at Abbeylara killed John Carthy two years ago and he produced a report to "prove" it. He told them there was no cause for concern in the McBrearty case or when allegations emerged about other Garda behaviour in Donegal. The McBreartys are now taking their case to Europe for want of credible justice at home. The Carthy family endured the second anniversary of John's death last month, with not a whit more information about why it happened.
The modern law enforcer Byrne tried to emulate is splitting under the weight of competing interests. Style has taken precedence over substance and the losers aren't only citizens, they are ordinary gardaí.
This week, we're asked to accept that Commissioner Byrne is actually two people in a single well-pressed uniform. One carries the buck for what happened on Monday night. The other is supposedly a Nuala O'Loan-type arbiter, capable of standing back far enough to assess his officers' behaviour and act on any systemic shortcomings he sees, including his own management style.
No wonder the Commissioner is under cover. Being all things to all men while being two people in one man is a feat that defies the best public relations advice on offer, never mind common sense.
While Byrne was hearing the news about 24 civilian arrests, 12 civilian injuries and a growing number of complaints about Garda behaviour, the real Nuala O'Loan was presenting a report to the Government alleging the Garda withheld information from the RUC before the Omagh bombing.
Byrne's people moved quickly to undermine the charges, suggesting there was an element of mischief in some of the evidence Ms O'Loan had used. Be that as it may, the conclusion was insulting in the extreme.
The implication that Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman doesn't know how to evaluate her sources is a serious attack on her office, and a telling indication of how the Garda view an independent Ombudsman's job. If you didn't know better, you'd think Ms O'Loan was a hysterical woman with a chip on her shoulder, rather than a highly-qualified legal expert acting with statutory support.
The reason why Ms O'Loan enjoys an 80 per cent public approval rating in Northern Ireland is because her office is independent and her staff, like her, has been appointed transparently through open competition. Hers is not a soft-landing post for local police officers who want to leave the force because they can't move further up and will make the required level of noise without rocking the boat. It's not, in other words, a job for the boys.
But jobs for the boys are what various Garda representatives such as the Garda Representative Association or George Maybury seem to want and what the Minister for Justice and his officials are prepared to deliver. An Inspectorate, they say, will be acceptable to officers and men. This would replace the feeble Garda Complaints Board to whom John O'Donoghue actually directed people this week, knowing it is toothless, knowing he and his officials have kept it starved of authority and resources for the last five years.
WHY the consensus between the Garda, Fianna Fáil and the Department of Justice? The cosiness is disturbing. If this was fiction, readers might be witnessing a trade-off of considerable proportions. The Garda Siochána has not investigated the most serious alleged corruption cases now on pause at the various tribunals, although its reluctance to do so goes against best international practice and, in some cases, specific advice. In return, it has avoided the kind of scrutiny an Ombudsman would bring.
The crime figures produced by the Garda since O'Donoghue launched his zero tolerance slogan consistently supported his political claims that he was making progress, yet the statistics were found in some cases to be incorrectly calculated and in others to be unavailable or out of date.
No Garda was injured or arrested this week, no senior officer was called to task for an alarming and unprofessional breach of ethics involving battering civilians over the head on a bank holiday in the capital city. This is the same police force with whom people mourned when Garda Tighe and Garda Padden were killed on the Stillorgan Road. The grief was genuine and thus the shock at how some gardaí behaved in Dame Street is all the greater. People deserve better than to have the issue of Garda accountability resolved in some done deal behind closed doors. And ordinary gardaí deserve better than to have their superiors run for cover at the first sign of trouble.