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The Association of Garda Sargents and Inspector says its members are shocked at the conviction
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of a Garda for dangerous driving after he pursued two masked men on scramblers.
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The Garda was convicted of dangerous driving in the Dublin District Court yesterday, banned
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from driving for two years, and fined 500 euro following an investigation by Fiss Rue
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the Garda Ombudsman.
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Members of the AGSI have been gathering at their annual conference in County Mayo, a
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crime car respondent Paul Reynolds is there.
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Paul, I know this isn't the first time that the issue of how to pursue criminals has
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a reason, but tell us about this one and about what the AGSI are saying.
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Yeah, it certainly brought us into sharp focus here today, Rachel.
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Garda Sean Shields was on duty in a Garda patrol car in July 2024.
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Two masked men were driving dangerously on scramblers, they gave him the finger, he pursued
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them, they got away.
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He was then investigated by Fiss Rue and charged, evidence was given in court, CCTV was produced,
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and he was found guilty by the judge in the Dublin District Court of dangerous driving.
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He was fined 500 euro and banned from driving for two years.
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Now the news, which is on the front page of the Irish independent from Andrew Fielin
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today, was greeted with dismay and disbelief here by Sargents and inspectors at the conference.
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Scramblers are due to be made illegal on the roads, after 16-year-old Grace Lynch was
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knocked down and killed in Fingless earlier this year.
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However, the AGSI said today that the protections are not there for Garda doing their job,
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trying to protect people from the scourge of scramblers.
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delegates here say this case and others like it will have a chilling effect, because
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Garda patrol car drivers will now be thinking, I don't really think I want to do this.
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Deputy General Secretary of the AGSI, Kevin Bulger also said that it would embolden
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those driving the scramblers and e-bikes, they now think they can quote, go for it, because
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they know the chances of a car they're pursuing them is lessened.
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People are shocked, and you get this with any facet of an investigation where it impacts
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a person who's doing their job, and that's basically what these people are, and again,
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it more so will affect our sister association in the GRA, because the most of them are
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the drivers that are driving this vehicle, and we supervise them.
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The reality of it is, it is going to create a problem.
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Conversations are happening inside and now we're at conference room there, this morning
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people are going, this is kind of ridiculous now.
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All the AGSI is also calling today for local fraud and money laundering units to be set
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How would that differ from what's in place at the moment?
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Well at the moment, there's only the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau, which investigates
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frauds all over the country, and we know that the one area of crime that is consistently
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increasing is fraud, while others like Bergeri and Tefs are declining much of crime, much
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of theft, much of personal crime is moving online.
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Now Inspector Brian Downey said today that they had established a local fraud unit in
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Balbrigen in North Dublin, and that the fraud convictions there had increased from just
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three to over 200, and that millions stolen in scams and laundered as the proceeds of crime,
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also through drug dealing, had been identified.
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In my area, we set up an economic crime unit to try and address that, and give an example
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of what happened in relation to that.
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So, the legislation allows for money laundering offenses to actually go after the people who
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are laundering that money and allowing their accounts to be used to actually laundering
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So, three years ago when we set up the unit, we looked back and said how many money laundering
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cases in my area that we have, we had three.
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After setting up the unit, we tripped 200 plus prosecutions, and we looked at the money
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that was going through, and we were able to identify five million euros going through
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one district in relation to money laundering.
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And that was Guard the Inspector Brian Downing.
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He was speaking to our crime correspondent Paul Reynolds in Westport.