Gardaí have made “limited progress” in introducing changes recommended after the forced eviction of a property on North Frederick St last September, which resulted in the arrest of Trinity student Conchúir Ó Radaigh.
A review carried out by the Garda Inspectorate, commissioned after high-profile controversies during the Jobstown protests in 2014 and the North Frederick St eviction last year, has found Garda guidelines for public order policing to be inconsistent and confusing.
The review, titled Public Order Policing: A Review of Practices in the Garda Síochána, also found that there is no clear definition within the force of “what constitutes a public order incident” and that there is “limited external accountability” with regard to the use of force.
Ó Radaigh was one of six protestors arrested last September when a private security firm ended the 25-day occupation of a property on North Frederick St.
During his arrest, which saw Gardaí in balaclavas policing the scene, Ó Radaigh reported sustaining soft tissue damage to his neck and a small concussion.
The review said that organisational learning within the force was “ad hoc”.
In an email statement to The University Times today, Ó Radaigh said the results of the report come “as no surprise to me whatsoever”.
He said that “the violence meted out to housing activists, myself included, at Frederick St was nothing new or abnormal”.
“What was significant about Frederick Street”, he said, “was that it gave people from all backgrounds a glimpse of how activists, working class people, migrants and other marginalised groups see the police every day – as a violent enforcer of state power that upholds injustice and criminalises our behaviour whilst turning a blind eye to the rank criminal behaviour of the privileged”.
In August 2018, Take Back the City, the housing group featuring a number of leading members of activist group Take Back Trinity, took over a number of vacant properties in the city centre.
The day after Ó Radaigh’s arrest, around 1,000 protestors brought traffic on O’Connell St to a total standstill to protest at the eviction.
In front of a heavy Garda presence, protestors carried photos of the masked security above their heads, chanting “shame, shame, shame”, in reference to the Gardaí involved in the arrests last night.
In October, the group occupied the offices of Airbnb, demanding that the government ban the company and other short-term letting platforms in Dublin city.
Weeks later, 3,000 students from all over the country took to the streets for the national Raise the Roof rally.
