A garda who was involved in an undercover drugs operation and pursued a suspect who was on an e-scooter has been acquitted of dangerous driving.<\/p>\n
The garda was charged following an investigation by the Office of the Police Ombudsman, Fiosr\u00fa, and a direction by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).<\/p>\n
The garda was charged with one count of dangerous driving on 6 August 2024 in Finglas.<\/p>\n
The court was told the garda was in an unmarked garda car observing a suspected drugs transaction in the area.<\/p>\n
He along with colleagues pursued one of the suspects who left on an e-scooter but refused to stop after garda\u00ed identified themselves and directed her to do so.<\/p>\n
The e-scooter then tried to “bunny hop” the kerb but collided with it and the driver – a young girl – fell on to the ground.<\/p>\n
She testified that the e-scooter had been hit by the garda car, but this was refuted by two garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n
Judge John Hughes said he was dismissing the case “without reservation” and acquitted the garda.<\/p>\n
The garda who was acquitted today was knocked down by a stolen motorcycle while on another drugs patrol in Finglas the following year.<\/p>\n
A man was subsequently arrested in connection with that offence.<\/p>\n
‘Common sense has prevailed’ – GRA<\/p>\n
The Garda Representative Association (GRA) has strongly criticised the decision to prosecute the garda for doing “his job in an area not far from where Grace Lynch was tragically killed”.<\/p>\n
GRA representative Garda Mark Ferris said that “common sense has prevailed, but it should never have required a hearing to reach this point”.<\/p>\n
He also said the case exposes “a deeper problem in that garda\u00ed who act, in good faith, to prevent and detect crime in the context of scramblers and e\u2011bikes are finding themselves before the courts”.<\/p>\n
“We cannot have a situation where, every time a garda attempts to carry out their duty to prevent, detect or investigate crime in a proportionate and necessary way, they face the prospect of ending up before a criminal court once a complaint is made,” he said.<\/p>\n
The GRA has again called for garda\u00ed to receive pursuit training and for new legislation to ensure that garda\u00ed “will not be criminalised for doing the job this State has asked them to do”.<\/p>\n
“That is the only way Grace’s Law will work in practice,” Garda Ferris said.<\/p>\n
Fiosr\u00fa declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A garda who was involved in an undercover drugs operation and pursued a suspect who was on an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-540446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}