Happy New Year - Armed Police on the Streets of Dublin

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Monday January 01, 2007 17:34

by Sir Royston

It's becoming more routine to see armed police on the streets of Dublin. Whether it's meant to reassure the citizenry or intimidate them is not clear.

It's hard to see how the presence of cops with assault weapons on the streets is going to have any effect on the level of crime.

Other effects are more easy to imagine. We can only assume that the Garda with the automatic rifle manning a vehicle checkpoint in Ballybough this afternoon has given some thought to the effect of high-velocity bullets whizzing around on the children and motorists nearby, in the event of him deciding to use such a deadly weapon in a built-up area.

What's interesting and newsworthy is that this was not a crime scene or a siege. These photographs were taken on a quiet day in the north inner city, and show the casual parading of a lethal firearm on the street.

There was a time when the fact that so many of the police were heavily armed was not explicit, and while there were often firearms to hand for the Guards in Dublin, the HK's and Uzi's were kept in the cars, and the Brownings were holstered or shoved discretely into coat pockets.

In recent months the cops in Dublin are more brazen about toting rifles and machine guns.

I remember seeing weapons on display in Belfast and thinking how their routine presence on the street had a psychological effect on the people there, as a sort of totem of the conflict which otherwise was largely invisible.

Perhaps it's a sight we'll get used to in other parts of the country, too.