{"id":627964,"date":"2026-09-17T23:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627964\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T23:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:26:11","slug":"man-who-called-garda-bitch-and-filmed-at-fuel-protest-convicted-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627964\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who called garda \u2018bitch\u2019 and filmed at fuel protest convicted \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A man (24) who called a male <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/an-garda-siochana\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/an-garda-siochana\/\">garda<\/a> a \u201cbitch\u201d at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/fuel-protests\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/fuel-protests\/\">fuel protest<\/a> in Whitegate, Co <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/cork\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/cork\/\">Cork<\/a> in April and took out his phone in order to film him has received a public order conviction.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Darragh Desmond of Broomfield, Midleton, Co Cork appeared before the District Court in his hometown on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Garda Sgt Majella O\u2019Sullivan told the court that a small number of people became abusive towards garda\u00ed during the fuel protest at Trabolgan Road in Whitegate on April 11th. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She said Desmond involved himself in the situation and told a garda to \u201cf**k off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He then took out his phone and began to record the garda, having been instructed to leave the area. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Defence solicitor Don Ryan said his client deeply regretted his actions. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The fourth-year apprentice has written a letter of apology to the garda. He also apologised at the time of his arrest. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ryan said his client had saved \u20ac500 for the Garda Benevolent Fund. He brought the funds to court. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge Colm Roberts said that it was deeply sexist to call a garda a bitch. On hearing that the garda was a man he described it as a case of \u201cinverse sexism\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He said that what occurred was a \u201cserious matter.\u201d He told Desmond that protest is at its more powerful when it is peaceful in nature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The judge added people could not go around intimidating and insulting garda\u00ed. \u201cHe [Desmond] was part of the mob. I don\u2019t like mobs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Desmond was fined \u20ac500 and convicted of the public order offence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man (24) who called a male garda a \u201cbitch\u201d at a fuel protest in Whitegate, Co Cork&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46,5721,171749,1346,61,60,30122,43],"class_list":["post-627964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork","tag-district-court","tag-fuel-protests","tag-garda-siochana","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-midleton","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627964","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=627964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}