View from a bridge snarls Garda task

THE GARDA'S Crime Task Force is a cross between the detective unit and the regular car patrol. Its members wear uniforms but travel in unmarked cars. They report routine policing problems back to base but they do not get involved in them, concentrating exclusively on crime.

They are the Garda's "third forced".

Yesterday was a quiet enough day for the task force, and for DMA East in general. There had been a brief flurry of activity around lunchtime when a man travelling on the DART responded to a passenger's request that he extinguish his cigarette by producing a large knife and ostentatiously wiping his trousers with it.

Fortunately for everybody, especially the person objecting to the cigarette, there was a Garda travelling in the same carriage. The DART was stopped at Dun Laoghaire and the knife wielder was soon in custody where, by way of explanation, he told gardai that the Icelandic pop singer Bjork was doing his head in" and he was going to get her.

A doctor was called to the station to decide if the man was mentally disturbed and if so what to do with him.

Meanwhile Garda life in the division returns to the eternal themes of burglary, car theft and (mostly) false alarms.

Garda Brian Fitzgerald and Garda Paul Warren are the Crime Task Force team for Unit C yesterday evening An early call for their information rather than action concerns the theft from a German tourist's camper van at Sandycove of two expensive cameras. They are asked to watch out for these, but the chances are slim.

The break in happened at 2 p.m and it is well after 3p.m when the report is made. So in the rueful words of Garda Fitzgerald, the cameras "are well and truly gone they're probably sold already".

But the person who stole them may still be in the area, perhaps looking for another job. So there is still a chance that he or she may be rumbled.

The work of the gardai in this regard is not helped by the ever lasting naivety of certain members of the public, and not just tourists.

The task force officers make a detour down to Dun Laoghaire's West Pier to provide an example. Here, by the sea front, is one of Dublin's riskiest car parks a fact which should be plain to anyone from the sprays of shattered glass spaced at regular intervals around it.

But even yesterday afternoon there are half a dozen cars parked there and at the weekend, according to the gardai, it will be full.

The car park is a thief's dream. It is lined with bushes, from which they can watch as the more careful drivers remove their valuables and place them openly in their car boots.

A bridge across the railway line offers a nice view both of the park and of the tourists as they walk away. Once they're out of sight the thief swoops.

"It's the work of 20 or 30 seconds," says Garda Fitzgerald. "And if they're locals, they're so, 150 hard to catch. They know every inch of the area and they're gone in a flash.

The bridges, he adds, looking resentfully at the one which overlooks the car park, "are deadly. If people would only report it when ever they see fellas hanging around on them, it would be invaluable to us".

Other problems are structural bones. The gardai's continuing circuit takes them repeatedly past the "Metals", a walled passageway that runs along the railway line between Dun Laoghaire and Dalkey.

The "Metals" could be designed as a criminal dispersion system. Too narrow for a Garda car in most places, it offers a fleeing burglar or bag snatcher high walls as cover and numerous exits.

Hence the need for the task force, which is designed to respond the instant a crime is reported.

A feud between petty drugs dealers in the Sallynoggin area has exercised them in recent times if heroin dealers can ever be called petty.

It spilled onto the street, literally, recently when the task force came across one of the individuals after he had been severely beaten with a baseball bat.

The man had lost teeth in the incident and required an ambulance. But when approached by the gardai he assured them he had no complaint to make.