The Irish Police Ombudsman or GSOC: Those are the guys that are supposed to be overseeing the rights and more of the wrongs of the Irish police force. Another group, unfortunately, which is also a toothless and seriously gummy lot. Take the pulse system, a police data base that has been accessed illegally by police for their own personal ends and has being the Internet vehicle for destroying people's characters, for wrongful arrests, and has became a feeding tube to the media for the same purpose and much more. The GSOC in all these instances has done little or nothing except do a public wringing of their hands every now and then. Not that the Police themselves, their intended target, have or ever will be of any help to them, and in that it is understandable in any human context for they are hardly going to participate in their own hanging.
The police too have years of combined experience in holding the glue together on the blue wall of silence even though it has shown a few cracks in recent years. It will take more than a few cracks though to be able to drive a wedge through it. Failure to cooperate with any investigation is a failure itself by virtue of the fact that when it comes to the police doing it, it is not viewed as a serious crime. When it is viewed that way, if ever, that wall of silence will crumble very fast. For now, as with all police forces internationally, we can only live in hope and have a lot of it for the complaints against the police keep on rising year on year.
In just a four year period there was over 10,000 complaints against the 13,000 strong Irish Police force and the main problem with the GSOC is that it is an investigative body/agency only. Any file collected on a suspect or errant policeman is then sent to the Department of Public Prosecution or DPP afterwards, and if an unlikely prosecution is warranted by them it then moves to trial. Ultimately, if any sanctions are deemed necessary against a police man/woman after a guilty verdict then this is reverted back to the boys in blues boss: the Police Commissioner.
Here are some of the run of the mill police sanctions in Ireland for policemen: turning up drunk at a murder scene or any scene, a policeman will face only a minimum two weeks loss of pay not to exceed 10% of his salary; if he runs over an innocent or guilty citizen with his trusty patrol car while drunk, he 'may' face an internal enquiry by, you guessed it, other policemen. This, in a nut shell, is why it is not a good idea to cooperate with the police at anytime unless it is for a very good cause starting with yourself last and in the first instance.
Barry Clifford
An excerpt from my forthcoming book: Law, Lawyers and Liars
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