It Occurs To Me: The Limerick Garda Scandal and should Micheál stay or go

I first got wind from a good source last November that the trial of five gardaí in Limerick might be in serious bother.

The gist of the tip-off was that the defense had evidence of text messages between a Deputy Commissioner and a senior Garda in Limerick “…to make sure those lads are ‘done’ and to tip the press off of all court appearances to maximise the fallout for them.

The position now is that the defense is going to look to bring …… into court to cross examine him on the text messages. It is said the only way to save face for NBCI and the Deputy Commissioner is for the state to withdraw the charges.”

The State didn’t withdraw, but after a nine-week trial, the five gardaí were fully cleared of all charges…thirty-nine charges in total were brought over alleged interference in road traffic prosecutions, yet the court rejected them in their entirety.

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It began at 6.36 a.m. on May 16, 2019, when gardaí from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) arrived at former superintendent Eamon O’Neill’s home in Co Clare.

Eleven members of the NBCI were present for the arrest of the superintendent in relation to alleged links to criminal elements.

The investigation was under Section 62 of the Garda Síochána Act, which makes it an offence for a member to release confidential information.

“I went into a deep state of shock and distress,” Mr O’Neill later told a court.

“I was trembling. I experienced an extreme form of palatable fear.” His wife, Sergeant Anne Marie Hassett, was held at their home for two hours in a downstairs room while their nine-month-old son was upstairs.

Phones and laptops were seized. After a protracted period, a result came back from the DPP that neither O’Neill nor a senior colleague should be charged with any offence.

The initial evidence against Mr O’Neill came from the word of a criminal source. It appears there was no other evidence. Subsequently, O’Neill and four others were charged with some 39 offences and found not guilty.

As journalist Mick Clifford concluded: “…the questions still remain. Could the 2019 arrest be the key? Was it necessary? Was it proportionate? Would any of it have happened had Mr O’Neill not been arrested in May 2019 on a premise that turned out to be completely hollow?”

“I never felt pressure like it in my whole life,” Mr O’Neill said outside Limerick Courthouse.

“It [An Garda Síochána] is an organisation that you give everything you can for it. But if they decide you fall, you fall heavy and they come after you. They don’t offer you any back-up, medical advice, they offer you nothing.”

This was a debacle and I agree with Labour TD Alan Kelly’s assessment: “There must be full transparency on the cost of this investigation and prosecution. Vast Garda resources, legal fees, and court time were consumed in a case that failed on every count. At a time when communities across the Midwest were crying out for visible policing, resources were diverted into a prosecution that went nowhere, representing a deeply troubling use of public money. The human cost of this cannot be ignored.

"Five gardaí were left under a cloud for almost seven years, with their professional and personal lives put on hold. No one who serves the State should be put through an ordeal of that length only to be fully vindicated in court. Their removal from frontline duties also had real consequences, with roads policing in the Midwest deteriorating significantly during their absence.”

To Go or Not to Go?

A number of friends contacted me after my piece about whether An Taoiseach should travel to Washington on St Patrick’s Day.

While many agreed that Donald Trump is an abomination as president, some thought that Micheál Martin had to soft-soap him in case he would exact economic revenge on Ireland.

But here’s the thing…he’s been proven to be totally unstable when it comes to adhering to any decision, witness the U-turns which have given him the name Taco — Trump always chickens out!

I’m not convinced that a bowl of shamrocks and some Cork plámas will have any long-term impact on this individual who seems to have the attention span of a goldfish.

Micheál Martin: To go or not to go?

Also, since I wrote my previous piece, he has compared the Obamas to apes and excluded the only Black US governor, Wes Moore of Maryland, from a traditionally bipartisan event involving the National Governors Association and the White House.

Trump is behaving like a KKK Klansman…unapologetically and without the mask, and I for one think it’s disgusting that our Taoiseach should go cap in hand to a bigot and a racist.

Last year, Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill said Sinn Féin would not attend the annual St Patrick’s Day shindig in The White House and said: “I’m taking a stand against an injustice which I see unravelling every day from the dangerous rhetoric from this new US president.”

At the time, the Taoiseach said Sinn Féin were “engaging in politics” over its decision, which was rather rich considering Trump is weaponising politics day and daily…and negatively. For the third year running, the SDLP will not attend the St Patrick’s Day celebrations. I commend them all.

Remember the Lumbees

On the subject of the Ku Klux Klan, back in January 1958, in an event that was far too conveniently shunted into the sidelines of history, a group of Native Americans proved that standing up to bigots and bullies actually works.

On January 18, 1958, in Hayes Pond, North Carolina, James “Catfish” Cole, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, had spent months trying to expand his organisation’s reach into Robeson County.

The problem was the Lumbee Tribe, who not only lived there but owned businesses as well. They were not easily intimidated, so Cole decided it was time to remind them who was in charge.

He organised a rally in an open cornfield near Maxton, bringing a generator, a PA system, a microphone, and a massive wooden cross wrapped in burlap and soaked in kerosene.

The plan was textbook Klan terror: burn the cross, deliver threatening speeches, watch the community cower. He even told local newspapers about it beforehand.

“We are going to have a little talk with the Indians,” he announced with the casual arrogance of a man who’d never been challenged. However, the Lumbee heard him loud and clear.

What Cole had ignored at his peril was that the Lumbee Tribe weren’t just farmers and shopkeepers. They were veterans, men who’d stormed beaches at Normandy and fought in frozen trenches in Korea.

Very quickly, they spread the word and as twilight settled over the cornfield on that cold January evening, about 50 to 100 Klansmen gathered in their white robes.

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Cole grabbed the microphone and began his speech about racial purity and white supremacy. Then out of the darkness, from every direction, Lumbee men and women emerged.

They came on foot, in trucks, with rifles and shotguns held high. Some carried rocks. Some carried sticks.

All of them carried something the Klan hadn’t expected: absolute fearlessness. Five hundred strong. Ten times the number of Klansmen.

They formed a line at the edge of the field and started walking toward the light. No running. No shouting yet. Just the steady, purposeful advance of people who’d decided enough was enough.

Cole’s voice faltered mid-sentence. He looked out and saw what was coming.

The mathematics of the situation became instantly, terrifyingly clear. One of the Lumbee men stepped forward and smashed the single light bulb illuminating the rally with the butt of his rifle, and then the Lumbee fired their weapons into the air.

The sound of hundreds of gunshots cracked through the night like thunder. It was deafening, overwhelming, and utterly deliberate.

These weren’t warning shots. This was psychological warfare from men who understood exactly how to break an enemy’s will.

The Klan didn’t stand their ground. They didn’t fight. They didn’t even attempt to maintain the appearance of courage. They broke completely.

Robed figures scattered in every direction, stumbling over themselves, abandoning their regalia, their keys, their carefully cultivated mystique.

Grand Dragon ‘Catfish’ Cole, the man who promised to “have a little talk,” sprinted for his life through freezing swamp water, leaving his wife sitting alone in her car. The Lumbee didn’t pursue. They didn’t need to. They’d already won.

Instead, they confiscated everything the Klan left behind: the PA system, the unburned cross, the abandoned robes. That night, at a victory celebration, Lumbee men wore the captured Klan robes as jokes, laughing and dancing in the symbols that were supposed to inspire terror.

The Klan’s recruitment efforts in North Carolina collapsed. Cole was arrested and convicted of inciting a riot.

The organisation that had terrorised communities across the South for generations discovered that their power had always rested on one fragile assumption: that people would be too afraid to fight back.

They just showed up and refused to be afraid. The lesson was simple and eternal…bullies only work in the dark. Turn on the lights, or in this case, shoot them out, and they run.

Trump may fancy himself as a latter-day Grand Wizard…but the Lumbees are fighting back. Bullies are cowards; they always run eventually.