SEAMUS LYNCH,
Sir, - Adrienne Jordan (August 12th) quite rightly asks "where are all the gardai?" concerning public disorder in Dublin. I'm just glad she wasn't present to witness their totally pathetic response to a recent example of "Dublin disorder" - directly beside the Bridewell Garda Station.
Whilst driving, my wife and I were alerted to the plight of an Asian mother, who was attemting to protect both herself and the baby in her pram, from a relentless assault of spitting, kicking, racial taunts and thrown objects.
We stopped the car and watched - momentarily paralysed by disgust. The perpetrators of this attack were as young as five or six and no older than 15, but were as many as 12 in number. Their racially motivated hatred and the venom of their taunting would make them ideal candidates for the Ku Klux Klan Youth Corp.
How relieved I was then to find a young Garda coming from the Bridewell, as the woman was tearfully defending herself from the physical assault whilst wiping purposefully directed saliva from her clothes. And how startled I was, upon offering myself as a witness, to find the Garda berating the Asian woman for grabbing the hand of a boy who had just spat on her trouser leg.
As she pleaded for him to intervene, he dismissed her with a "you won't tell me what to do", before - almost reluctantly - clearing the children with a modestly administered rebuke.
Perhaps they are restrained by a legal system that cultivates such behaviour in young people, but surely they can do better than this? How many of us have made a complaint or reported an offence to a Garda only to be met with virtual indifference and/or an unsettling feeling that the label "annoying do-gooder" has been mentally applied to us? In matters pertaining to the increasing wave of criminal activity by our youth, perhaps it's time we stopped asking where our "protectors of the peace" are and started looking elsewhere. - Yours etc.,
SEAMUS LYNCH,
Portrane,
Co Dublin