The Garda Commissioner has said that the number of drug related intimidation incidents reported to Garda\u00ed are just “the tip of the iceberg”.<\/p>\n
Justin Kelly also described as “unfathomable” the fact that there were a number of similar incidents in the days following the arson attack in Waterford last month, which claimed the lives of four people.<\/p>\n
The issue was a major focus of the latest public meeting between the Commissioner and the Policing and Public Safety Authority in Co Cavan today.<\/p>\n
Mr Kelly told the meeting that the issue was “nothing new” and can range from threats to damaging property, as far as causing death.<\/p>\n
He said that sometimes drug debts are being sold to another criminal group, who can then set the debt at a higher amount.<\/p>\n
The Commissioner said that it is “hugely traumatic” and “terrifying” for families caught up in it, and urged them to come forward to Garda\u00ed or engage with ‘DRIVE’, a national programme set up to tackle the problem.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t matter who you are. Even if you are a drug supplier, or your son or daughter is, if the family is subject to DRI, that doesn’t matter to us. There shouldn’t be any stigma about coming forward,” he added.<\/p>\n
He said there should be no stigma in reporting, that people can do so anonymously, and that Garda\u00ed can also gather evidence against people without the need to take a statement of complaint.<\/p>\n
An average of 600 incidents of drug related intimidation are reported to garda\u00ed annually, but the Commissioner described reported incidents as “the tip of the iceberg”.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed are trying to capture data on the pulse system, with “drug related intimidation” now listed as a motivation.<\/p>\n
However, he said that motivation has to be established.<\/p>\n
People going through drug related intimidation were urged to seek support and advice.<\/p>\n
“I encourage people, before you make any decisions around anything, seek some advice. Seek help. People should not be alone in this,” Mr Kelly said.<\/p>\n
“I’m not saying criminal justice is the automatic solution for everything in this. The worst thing for me is to think of a parent or grandparent facing this on their own,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Garda Commissioner has said that the number of drug related intimidation incidents reported to Garda\u00ed are just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-669147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669147","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=669147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}