Crime fears as Louth Garda Division merger proposed

The proposed new operating model, which would see the Louth Garda Division combined with the Cavan-Monaghan Division, was heavily criticised at Wednesday’s public meeting of the Dundalk Joint Policing Committee (JPC).

In light of the meeting, it was decided that the Dundalk JPC would write a letter of opposition to the Minister and the commissioner expressing concern with the changes.

Raising the issue from the floor, Sinn Fein TD  Ruairí Ó Murchú took issue with the size of the three county model citing the high crime rates in Drogheda in the past few years due to feuds, along with the increase of anti-social behaviour and drug crimes in Dundalk as reasons the new model would be unworkable.

“When we’re talking about Dundalk, we know some of the issues to be dealt with here both publicly and privately whether we’re talking about anti-social behaviour or drug dealing and even more serious than that.

“Over the last fortnight, we had three gardai injured in a ramming just beside Pearse Park involving a stolen car.”

“Chief Superintendent Alan McGovern, you told me that there will be a superintendent with a responsibility for major crime and also murder and that they will be based in Bailieborough with responsibility for this entire area.

“I imagine you’re already under significant pressure having to deal with these two divisions. I just don’t see how it makes sense.

“I would be asking the JPC to write directly to both the minister and the commissioner from a point of view of stalling this and reviewing it.”

Deputy O’Murchú gave the example of how the proposed merging of the Donegal, Sligo and Leitrim Garda Divisions was scrapped after public pressure and said he hoped the same could be done with the proposed Louth merger.

In response, Chief Superintendent Alan McGovern said it was his role to implement government policy and gave assurances that under the model Louth would still have the same level of resources.

Outlining the changes due to take place under the model, the Chief Superintendent said that they would allow the current Superintendent of the Dundalk Garda District, Charlie Armstrong, to dedicate more time to community engagement activities.

“Superintendent Charlie Armstrong will have sole responsibility for community engagement in north Louth, so he will be covering the same area for community engagement.”

He said it was currently the case that Superintendent Armstrong could be gone for weeks on end, taking statements investigating a serious crime, but that under the new model that will be somebody else.

“So he’ll be able to dedicate more of his time to [engagement].”

He continued:

“In addition to that, another superintendent in Carrickmacross will be dealing with complaints and discipline matters and also governance.

“A lot of superintendents’ time can be taken up taking statements and he can be gone for two or three days in the week in relation to police matters. He won’t have to deal with that anymore.

“Additionally, there’s an assistant principal who will be doing administrative work and taking away a lot of that administrative burden from Superintendent Armstrong, again giving him more time to spend in the community and freeing him up to do more community engagement work which a lot of people want to see.

“We will also have an inspector of roads policing, I think that’s important from what we heard here tonight.

“The operating model is aimed at giving us more divisional autonomy. So we will have our own separate crime section for example.

“We already have our own detective services unit. We actually have two now in the Louth, Cavan-Monaghan Division and we have two Armed Support Units, one in Dundalk, one in Cavan.”

The Chief Superintendent did, however, admit that the geographic scale of the area proposed under the new operation model did pose challenges and that it was “a big area to cover.”

“We will be looking at additional resources to mitigate against that risk and this JPC and yourself Deputy [O’Murchu] have been very supportive over the years in relation to resources for Louth, and Dundalk in particular, and we expect that support to continue and we thank you for that.”

A number of representations were also made from the floor by local politicians and community activists decrying the moving of a popular community garda to regular service as part of new roster changes.

The JPC agreed to write to the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice expressing their opposition to the changes and requesting that they be scrapped.

Speaking after the meeting Chairman of the Dundalk JPC, Fianna Fail’s Sean Kelly said it was vital to maintain and improve the level of community policing in the area.

“By the end of the meeting we had decided that we are going to write to the Garda Commissioner and the Minister for Justice voicing our opposition to both the roster changes and the restructuring changes”, he said.

“It’s more community policing we need, not less. Community policing and the ones [gardai] that are there [currently]... we have seen the value of them all the way through Covid and what they provide to local communities.

“We need to be discussing how to get more community resources and not about putting guards who are in the community section at present into regular service because it’s just not practical.

“We need to maintain and improve our community section as opposed to having any cuts whatsoever.”

In relation to the reassigning of the popular community garda, Superintendent Charlie Armstrong gave a commitment to review the situation and come back to local representatives.