Knock Knock, Who's there?, Garda, Garda who?

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday July 19, 2002 17:41 by Colin McCaffrey cwmccaffrey at fastmail dot fm

Recent early morning Gardai raids

This is a longer version of a letter that i sent into several national papers. It doesn't look like it will be published though. The letter is an account of my rental accommodation having been raided early in the morning of Gardai operation Hyphen.

Dear Editor

What was it that woke me this morning? Not the Dawn Chorus nor the bustling of the bin men, no guess again. I'll tell you, it was at least five members of the Drug Squad pounding repeatedly on my front door. I was slowly coming to my senses wondering who could it be at this hour of the morning, perhaps my housemate's unexpected friend or maybe somebody had left their keys on the kitchen table, not quite. My equally bemused housemate answered the door. Next I heard voices then footsteps up the stairs. Two of them came barging through my bedroom door without knocking, wearing their neon blue rubber gloves with me standing there half naked. I half expected an order to assume the position but carried on dressing myself nonetheless. What was going on? was I having a particularly vivid nightmare. They proceeded to question me. My name? How long was I living here? Etc. I answered them as coherently as I could manage. "What's this all about?" I ask. "We're looking for cannabis." Came the reply. "Do you have any, if you do you'd better tell us now, because we are going to find it, and we'll bring you down to the station." They repeated the same line of questioning and repeatedly I protested my innocence as he picked up and examined various artifacts from my bedroom. He went down stairs again while his colleague cross-examined me.

What could possibly have brought them to my door? The only clues to this were in one of their exchanges with my housemate and her German friend. This girl was spending the night whilst over here on her first visit, presumably to relax and sample a little bit of the famed Irish hospitality. I imagine she didn't expect to be rudely stormed in upon and ordered to sit on the couch while they searched the room and questioned her repeatedly. One of them said that they had reports of non-EU nationals in the house. I don't know who they were looking for but I suspect that whoever they thought they were looking for had left the house, if not the country, over a year ago! Had they bothered to use more subtle resources they might have established that there were only Irish citizens registered at this address with one exception, an American girl who was naturalized and in the legitimate employment of a national newspaper. Surely this was not their man?

The entire incident was over in fifteen to twenty minutes but I was shaking for a couple of hours afterwards with shock and disbelief. No doubt they had several more homes to burst into before breakfast. Heaven forbid there might be more non-EU nationals at large in Dublin's fair city! I'd have thought that the Gardai have had enough bad publicity recently than to go invoking more! I wonder exactly how easy is it to gain a search warrant for a house in this city. I thought also of the rest of the neighbours peering out from behind drawn curtains and wondering what was going on over here, this is the sort of thing that can stigmatize people completely needlessly. This thought is particularly disturbing in light of past activities of vigilante groups in the city. I mean what's next, a lynch mob trying to burn us out of the house!

Be advised folks, keep that bath robe handy because if you are living in rental accommodation, tomorrow morning it might be you!
Big brother is watching you, he's not sure what he is looking for but when he finds it, you'll be the first to know, oh and your neighbours too!

A concerned and groggy citizen
Dublin 8
(Name withheld for fear of further unwarranted hassle)

P.S. Is this what is meant by Zero tolerance? Hmmm, interesting, very interesting.