Windscreens smashed

snuffle said:
I've never seen the gardai bother with fingerprinting TBH when it's a "small" crime like house break-ins or car break-ins. Doubt it would turn up much as I doubt that there would be a huge database of fingerprints to compare it to, or the manpower to bother trawling through a database for such "inconsequential" crimes.

When I lived in a city centre years ago, my car was vandalised a number of times -back window smashed in (complete with the empty vodka bottle used to smash it lying in the back seat) front windscreen broken, wing mirrors kicked off, etc. on different occasions.

My house there was also broken into, and some of my possessions I saw later discarded in an disused yard near my house (which I couldn't access due to it being surrounded with razor wire) and the guards never bothered to even attempt to gain access to the yard via the owners (an Post) to retrieve the possessions either. The thieves had also stolen my house and car keys, and had tried to steal my car from outside the house, but as it was parallel parked in a tight spot they ran out of patience and decided to leave it, so in these cases, if the guards had wanted fingerprints, they could have had them you would assume, but these crimes seem to be seen as not worthy of anything but logging for insurance purposes.

Each time I reported the various break-ins/vandalisms, I was merely met with the response -oh I suppose you need to get it logged to get your insurance to pay out then eh.

Needless to say I moved out of the city centre to a quieter area.
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I wonder is there any connection between lack of garda concern for 'small' crime like this and insurance premiums ?
 
What this means is, is that if I have the inclination*, I can go out now and bust up a neighbour's car, without having to worry about being caught by the guards.

(*I don't have the inclination)
 
ClubMan said:
Totally disagree based on my own experience with them in similar circumstances. I have generally found that they respond in a timely fashion (whether on foot of a call to 999/112 or one to the local station) and I have generally found them professional and helpful.
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Given the number of negative posts about the Gardai I thought I'd second this comment. I live in an area with a very high crime rate and despite taking unbelievable abuse from both the victims and perpetrators, they remain curteous and professional at all times. However, perhaps it really depends on the branch you are dealing with.

One thing I will say from personal experience is that the Gardai seem better set up to deal with community groups and residents groups and the like. If there is an ongoing problem of petty crime, anti-social behaviour, vandalism and so forth in your area, the Gardai will better respond to the needs of those representing a group of concerned citizens.

One of the big problems in this country is people seem unwilling to report petty crimes because they think "ah sure the Garda will do nothing", as though they feel every broken wing mirror in the country should have five detectives assigned to solving it. If you can't be bothered to even pick up the phone and report a crime, how bothered do you imagine the Gardai will be about solving it?
 
room305 said:
One of the big problems in this country is people seem unwilling to report petty crimes because they think "ah sure the Garda will do nothing", as though they feel every broken wing mirror in the country should have five detectives assigned to solving it. If you can't be bothered to even pick up the phone and report a crime, how bothered do you imagine the Gardai will be about solving it?
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Well said.
 
shnaek said:
In fairness though, not all the Gardai are bad. But think of the people you went to school with who ended up joining the Gardai. That thought never inspires me with confidence.
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Why? How do you know who I went to school with? :confused:
 
ClubMan said:
Why? How do you know who I went to school with? :confused:
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I was referring to the royal 'you' - ie. 'one'.
In my experience the people I know and went to school with who ended up with the gardai were sound heads, but the biggest bunch of messers I know. Now most of them are friends of mine, so I amn't saying they are bad people. But they were messers for sure. Great craic though. But they wouldn't be ones to take you too seriously. They would be sound to deal with, and courteous. They just wouldn't be rushing around to do anything about your complaint.
Seeing as how you mention yourself and the people you went to school with - what were your school mates like who ended up in the Gardai?
 
A house alarm was blaring on our street for about 45 minutes late one evening a few months back. I went out to check and saw the blue light flashing about 15 houses up from ours. I called the Garda to report it and asked them if anyone else had - I assumed someone closer to the house might have noticed - but they said no. About ten minutes later the blaring stopped. I wonder how many people on the street said to themselves "About time too!" without realising that nobody else had actually reported the alarm in all that time.
 
shnaek said:
I was referring to the royal 'you' - ie. 'one'.
In my experience the people I know and went to school with who ended up with the gardai were sound heads, but the biggest bunch of messers I know. Now most of them are friends of mine, so I amn't saying they are bad people. But they were messers for sure. Great craic though. But they wouldn't be ones to take you too seriously. They would be sound to deal with, and courteous. They just wouldn't be rushing around to do anything about your complaint.
Seeing as how you mention yourself and the people you went to school with - what were your school mates like who ended up in the Gardai?
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Agree with you Shnaek, my own little theory is that the quality of candidates entering the gardai had dropped significantly since free 3rd level education and the celtic tiger boom! And a knock on of this is the quality of work done by the gardai has suffered.

I await with baited breath for folk to disagree!!!
 
friend of mine was broken into - besides stolen items and damage to windows and items in house they also ripped the fittings off gas hob, turned gas on and left 2 candles lit in kitchen - presumably to cause a fire or explosion to cover their tracks (they left blood all over the place, one of them must have gotten cut smashing a window).

anyway - guards treated it a little more seriously than regular break in because of lit candles and gas.

my friend was 6 months pregnant at the time and asked me to drive her to garda station to make statement.

both of us were amazed that the entire statement was done in handwriting, the guard taking the statement was actually wording it and rephrasing my friends version of events and kind of putting words in her mouth.

we both asked at the end what the story was with the statement - it was handwritten, was it going to be entered in a database later?

she laughed and said 'no way - sure we wouldnt have time to be doing things like that'.

so what happens to it? it gets filed. how does someone know to go looking for it if the same circumstances occur again in a break in? They dont - unless they trawl through all the files or happen to share cases with the guard who took my friends statement.

im not surprised many crimes dont get linked if thats the system they use.
 
I also have my suspicions regarding the "falling" crime rate and deel it's more down to people who couldn't be arsed to enter small crimes on the computer.

Problem would be easily solved if the Gardai were obliged to give you a Pulse reference number every time you reported a crime.


Murt
 
leghorn said:
Do the guards not take fingerprints?

I remember a good few years ago, someone tried to break into a friend's house in the UK. Police took fingerprints and caught the culprits.
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Like you I know of lots of break-ins here + the Gardai never seemed too interested, never took fingerprints ....just disappeared after noting a crime was comitted + nothing was heard about it again.
The UK police are a different force, much more professional. They need to be, with its much bigger population etc etc
 
Murt10 said:
I also have my suspicions regarding the "falling" crime rate and deel it's more down to people who couldn't be arsed to enter small crimes on the computer.

Problem would be easily solved if the Gardai were obliged to give you a Pulse reference number every time you reported a crime.


Murt
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I recently heard talk on a local radio about how crime rates were on the way down, however they based this on "arrest rates" rather than actual incidents reported, the words "arrest rates" were referred to briefly and fleetingly, giving the impression that crime rates as a whole were down if you weren't listening carefully. To me that just screams of a fall in solving cases/catching criminals, rather than an actual decline in the number of cases.
I do think that people are getting to a point where they think "what's the point in reporting something" - I mean, if a bicycle is stolen from your back garden, you're more than likely going to just get annoyed but not bother reporting it as the guards are not likely to be assigning the special branch to finding a bike, at the end of the day.

This means smaller crimes go unreported, from the above mentioned example of theft, to more serious ones like getting attacked on the way home from a nightclub, for example. Hence - crime stats appear to be down. Depressing really.
 
And this is why we should report every crime, no matter how small, so they don't get away with pawning these dubious stats as fact.
 
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