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| The Famine Memorial At Custom House Quay Dublin IRELAND. |
A long
history of colonial and religious repression, emigration, poverty, poor housing, little-or no
education, unemployment, isolation, little or no state support for marginalised
families, postcode-discrimination in many areas of social- interaction causing-
rejection and social exclusion, are the main social causes of
poor-mental-health-outcomes and addiction, more commonly called- MADNESS:
“Some
children, in certain areas” were being exploited and groomed into the drugs
trade and that, once in, it was hard to get out, particularly for those who
have obligations because of debts accrued. The typical reaction of the State
was to respond with a hard-line approach, with new powers and new laws. “It’s
often a symbolic reaction by the State trying to reassert itself, but really it
is symbolic of an absence of authority and a symptom of that absence in certain
areas, where people are disengaging from the police and the criminal justice
system due to fear.
http://crimenewsjournal.blogspot.com/2014/10/dublin-rte-report-exposes-high-levels.html#.Xja_jG52tPY
Last month’s gruesome attacks are indicative of a trend in violent crime that cannot be divorced from the effect of cuts to policing and other services. THE burial of the three McGinley children comes at the end of a particularly gruesome January.
http://crimenewsjournal.blogspot.com/2014/10/dublin-rte-report-exposes-high-levels.html#.Xja_jG52tPY
Last month’s gruesome attacks are indicative of a trend in violent crime that cannot be divorced from the effect of cuts to policing and other services. THE burial of the three McGinley children comes at the end of a particularly gruesome January.
Those three deaths should, in any normal context, demand that every
other serious crime, even every other homicide, not be mentioned, such is the
scale of the horror. But the triple murder of Conor McGinley, 9, his brother
Darragh, 7, and their little sister, Carla, 3, came in the same few weeks that
saw the shocking murder and dismemberment of Keane Mulready-Woods, 17.
The last
month has also seen the violent death of another young man, Cork youth Cameron
Blair, 20. There have been seven violent deaths already this year, almost the
same number as in the first three months of last year.
In
addition, January saw the attempted abduction of a woman out walking, several
attempted gun murders in Drogheda and north Dublin, and the setting alight of a
man in his Cork home. The start of the month was ominous when, on January 2, an
18-year-old had one of his fingers cut off in a fight involving up to 20 youths
in Artane, north Dublin. In a trend that has become a feature of such acts of
violence, the incident was captured on video and shared on social media. On
January 6, a woman in her late 60s and out for her morning walk near Dublin’s
Phoenix Park was subject to an attempted abduction when a man tried
unsuccessfully to bundle her into a car.
On
January 11 came the first homicide of the year, with the fatal beating of John
Butler, aged 48, in Portlaw, Co Waterford. On January 12, the same day as a
shooting in Kilbarrack, north Dublin, in which a man in his 30s received
injuries, Keane Mulready-Woods went missing. At 6.20pm the following day,
January 13, a botched shooting occurred on the Bridge of Peace in Drogheda,
when a gunman fired into a taxi. The gunman’s target was a senior member of one
of the two feuding gangs in the town. He was in the front passenger seat and
his partner in the back seat. The target escaped being hit, but the innocent
taxi driver, John Myles, was shot in the back. As he said in an emotional
interview on local radio LMFM, he narrowly escaped being either paralysed or
killed. Gardaí now suspect that attack may have been in revenge for the
abduction and what was then the suspected murder of Keane.
That
night, in an act that has been compared to the actions of the Mafia or even the
Mexican cartels, a sports bag was thrown from a car onto the streets of an
estate in Coolock, north Dublin. Discovered by local youths, it contained the
four limbs of a body. Gardaí believe it was deliberately put there to send a
message to local criminals, linked to the other side of the Drogheda feud. Videos
were circulated on social media, purporting to be of Keane’s dismembered body
and head, in a further act of humiliation.
READ MORE
Gardaí
quickly stated that the videos were not of Keane. Two days later, a head was
found inside a burning car near Drumcondra in north Dublin city. That day, Gardaí
confirmed the remains as that of Keane. As the country tried to digest the
unfolding horror, a 20-year-old man had his life cut short in Cork city. Cameron
Blair was fatally stabbed outside a house party on Bandon Rd. His was the sixth
violent death in Cork since July, and came just three weeks after Frankie
Dunne, a homeless man in supported accommodation, was found dismembered in the
grounds of a vacant house on Boreenmanna Rd on December 28. In the two days
after Cameron’s death, two men escaped being killed in a gangland shooting in
north Dublin, while two other men, one just 21, were injured in a shooting
outside a pub in Sixmilebridge, Co Clare.
On January
20, up to three men, believed to have been armed with a machete and iron bars,
entered the home of Keith Greaney in Mayfield, Cork. They beat him, doused him
in petrol, and set him alight. That horrific assault followed an attack in the
city a few days previously when a man suffered a fractured skull after being
struck by men wielding a hammer and a baseball bat. Then on Friday evening,
January 24, the three McGinley children were found when their father Andrew and
emergency services entered the family home. On the same day, a 17-year-old male
in Dundalk was injured by an attacker brandishing a samurai sword. On January
26, Philip Doyle, aged 33, was fatally stabbed outside his home in Gorey, Co
Wexford. Three days later, two unarmed uniformed gardaí escaped a grim fate
after a gunman fired twice at their marked patrol car in north Wexford after
earlier pointing a gun at them and making threats.
CSO
figures show that homicides — murder and manslaughter — have fallen from a peak
in the mid to late noughties, with 69 homicides in 2005, 74 in 2006, and 87 in
2007. The number hovered around the 60 mark over the next seven years, before
dropping dramatically in 2015 (36). It rose to 48 in 2017 and 47 in 2018, with
29 in the first nine months of 2019. January 2020 shows a reversal in the
trend, but experts warn it is only one month and that figures could be
dramatically different in the coming months. The seven violent deaths in
January compare to eight in the first three months of 2019. The corresponding
figures for the first three months of previous years were: 12 (2018), 10
(2017), with the highest in 2010 (18) and 2009 (16).
 |
| Irish Drug Baron Christy Kinahan |
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| Irish Drugs Baron Daniel Kinahan |
“In my
time the average was around 60 homicides over a year,” said former Louth
detective inspector Pat Marry. “With seven murders, manslaughters, and sudden
deaths in January, we would be going over that [if the trend continues]”. He
said the dismemberment of Keane was “horrendous” with the gang behind it
“really overstepping the mark” by abducting, torturing, and dismembering the
youth and then deliberately displaying body parts in areas where enemies lived.
But he points out that savage violence is not new in gangland terms and cites
extreme violence inflicted by members of the Drogheda gangs before, including
on a couple suspected of being murdered and violated by one notoriously violent
crime boss. Mr Marry, author of The Making of a Detective, said he worked in
Blanchardstown, west Dublin at the time of the notorious Westies (late
90s-early 2000s) who had a habit of inflicting extreme violence on women,
including those who were pregnant. He declined to comment on the McGinley
children but said that the violence in gangland was part and parcel of that
criminality.
After the
murder of Keane, community groups such as the Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign,
as well as researchers and youth workers, told the Irish Examiner that the
extreme level of violence perpetrated by gangs, and the grooming of children
into gangs, had been going on for many years and highlighted by them, with
little response. They also said that this trend could not be divorced from the
effect on working-class communities of austerity cuts to policing, social
services, and drug and youth projects. Added to that, they said, has been the
collapse in the partnership approach between State and community that was there
in the mid to late 1990s as part of the response to gangland violence and drug
epidemics.
Many of
these issues, and others, have also been detailed in research projects
published last year. Mr Marry said Gardaí have succeeded against gangs when the
proper resources and management were there. He said that after the murder of
Garda Tony Golden in October 2015, Gardaí demanded that management respond to
the dearth of manpower in Louth, resulting in a large increase in staff on
transfer.
He said in 2016-17 they set up Operation Scale in the Dundalk district, which involved a plan, surveillance, undercover work, and checkpoints in the district and along the border, supported by the Armed Support Unit and the work of the Criminal Assets Bureau. Mr Marry said they identified the various gang members, drew up profiles, and “went after them”, seizing more than €1m in property, drugs, and cash, and a house. Some 25 street dealers were jailed, he claims there was a 30% drop in crime and a 45% fall in burglaries. He said they “broke up” the gangs targeted. But after 12 months there was no more funding and they “pulled the plug” on the operation. “Operation Scale is, in my opinion, a blueprint for policing, what Gardaí can achieve when it has the resources and proper management,” he said. He strongly criticised reports of serious cuts to overtime, saying it, and manpower, was the “lifeblood” of policing. Johnny Connolly, a criminologist at the University of Limerick, declined to comment on the McGinley tragedy.
 |
| Irish Drugs Baron George (The Penguin) Mitchel |
 |
| Irish Drug Baron Paul Rice |
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| Irish Drug Baron Gerry (The Monk) Hutch |
He said in 2016-17 they set up Operation Scale in the Dundalk district, which involved a plan, surveillance, undercover work, and checkpoints in the district and along the border, supported by the Armed Support Unit and the work of the Criminal Assets Bureau. Mr Marry said they identified the various gang members, drew up profiles, and “went after them”, seizing more than €1m in property, drugs, and cash, and a house. Some 25 street dealers were jailed, he claims there was a 30% drop in crime and a 45% fall in burglaries. He said they “broke up” the gangs targeted. But after 12 months there was no more funding and they “pulled the plug” on the operation. “Operation Scale is, in my opinion, a blueprint for policing, what Gardaí can achieve when it has the resources and proper management,” he said. He strongly criticised reports of serious cuts to overtime, saying it, and manpower, was the “lifeblood” of policing. Johnny Connolly, a criminologist at the University of Limerick, declined to comment on the McGinley tragedy.
READ MORE
On
violence linked to gangs and the drugs trade, he said there had been a
“qualitative change” in the nature of violence in which the target of the
violence had extended beyond the person concerned, to their families. This, as
documented by Citywide and the National Family Support Network, has seen
families being intimidated to pay drug debts of their loved ones. This
intimidation could range from verbal threats to cars and homes being petrol
bombed or shot at, to people being physically attacked.
Mr Connolly,
who has researched drug markets and gangs, said the inclusion of families as a
target has “become normalised”. He said Keane’s dismemberment was “harrowing
and shocking” and a “symbolic act” to send a message to the other side. “The
use of violence as a symbol has not really been seen so much here,” he said.
“We have had intimidation, but not that sort of depraved violence. Is this
something we are going to see more of?”
He said
“some children, in certain areas” were being exploited and groomed into the
drugs trade and that, once in, it was hard to get out, particularly for those
who have obligations because of debts accrued. He said the typical reaction of
the State was to respond with a hard-line approach, with new powers and new
laws. “It’s often a symbolic reaction by the State trying to reassert itself,
but really it is symbolic of an absence of authority and a symptom of that
absence in certain areas, where people are disengaging from the police and the
criminal justice system due to fear. “That should be seen as a major crisis.”
He
said a more hard-line State response can result in a more violent market,
postulating that criminals who are “risk-averse” might leave the market, but
that those who are “risk- tolerant” stay in it. “A more appropriate response is
to engage consistently with the communities affected and to reach out to those
kids and not to give up on them,” he said. “Work with them in an intensive way,
provide legitimate opportunities, to have any hope of getting them away.”
 |
| The Central Mental Hospital Dundrum Dublin |
ENDS:
1. CRIME NEWS JOURNAL: Dublin's Tree Of Hope And Home …
https://crimenewsjournal.blogspot.com/2014/06/dublins-tree-of-hope-and...
03/06/2014 ·
This is the true story of the annual commemorative Christmas
Tree that is erected and lit during the first week each December at
the Buckingham Street/Killarney Street Junction In Dublin's
North-Inner-City and its companion Home Monument, which stand side-by-side at
this street junction where heroin dealers sold their drugs, unhindered to young
people in one of the most deprived, …
2. Archbishop Lights Dublin’s Tree Of Hope | ARCHIVE ...
https://drugsinfonewslineireland.wordpress.com/.../archbishop-lights-dublins-tree-of-hope
06/12/2007 ·
The tree was a gift to brighten the dark days of
Winter and also – a symbol of ’hope’ and the
tree became known as the ‘Tree of Hope’. Ten
years ago(1996), when the tree was
first put up, it was a time of anger, isolation and loneliness for many people
in our community (Dublin’s …
The medical staff at
Dundrum consists of three psychiatrists. Two of the psychiatrists,
Dr Cassin and Dr O’Sullivan took Rodney Rice on a tour of the hospital,
while the patients were in the exercise yard. They describe various patient
types, their medication, circulation and isolation. The two doctors look after
36 murderers, 50 remand patients, and 54 ‘207’ patients. Of the total of 140
patients, 112 are men.
A ‘Seven Days’ report by
Rodney Rice broadcast on 12 January 1971.
What causes the high rate of mental illness
in the west of Ireland?
A man who spent a long time living in the west of Ireland
believes social conditions have a large impact on mental health.
One sees a lot of old bachelors and old
maids living alone, they become odd, this may be some way connected with emigration also because
it’s well known the best emigrate and then the weakest remain on, and they find
themselves cut away from life.
He saw four people in two counties in the west of Ireland
fall under the impact of powerful missionary speakers
which led them to
Develop certain complexes and became mad.
He also recalls meeting a young priest in the west who
underwent psychiatric treatment because of his loneliness. This priest lived on
an island in the Atlantic ten miles off the west coast of Ireland.
At night-time as he saw cars coming and
going on the mainland he felt like going off his mind, actually he nearly did.
In certain parts of Ireland where people in one village
are all related,
Blood thins out and insanity happens, just
as we have seen it happen among the royal families of Europe.
If people drink badly made poteen, particularly in
large quantities,
It has the effect of upsetting them
mentally.
On the whole, however,
Emigration and loneliness has a great deal
to do with it, and the fact that in many places in the west there is no social
life.
This episode of ‘7 Days’ was broadcast on 11 October
1968. The reporter is Ted Nealon.
FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW TO VIEW RTE ARCHIVES:
Notes on Causes and Solutions of Social Problems | Grade 7 ...
https://www.kullabs.com/classes/subjects/units/lessons/notes/note-detail/2607
Social problems are the general
factors that affect and damage society. Social problems often involve problems
that affect real life. The main causes of social problems are: Unemployment; Poverty;
Rapid population growth; Urbanization; Lack of education; Superstitious beliefs;
…
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https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/the-prison-trap-1.1526835
The
prison trap Mental illness is not a crime. ... either at the Central
Mental Hospital, in Dundrum in south Dublin, which
is Ireland’s only specialist forensic mental-health
facility, or at ...
2.
Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland ...
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/hearing-voices-the-history-of-psychiatry-in...
Hearing
Voices: The History of Psychiatry in
Ireland Brendan Kelly review. Brendan Kelly demonstrates that we need nothing
less than a revolution in mental health
care and quite possibly a ...
ENDS:
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