Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has said that public disorder at asylum centre sites “shouldn’t be inevitable” and said there are lessons to be learned by other organisations from Coolock.
Gardaí came under attack and fires were set several times at the former Crown Paints factory in Coolock which has been earmarked as housing for asylum seekers.
The building is to be renovated to accommodate more than 500 international protection applicants.
Protests were organised at the site by a group called “Coolock Says No”.
Speaking before the Policing Authority on Thursday, Mr Harris said that three gardaí were injured in the incidents in Coolock last week, with one member hospitalised after being struck by a stone.
He also said threats to and “unsavoury” statements were being made about gardai online which they would report to the Director of Public Prosecutions where appropriate.
He said members had come under assault through the use of “various projectiles” and said they dealt with it with “courage and fortitude”.
Outlining the timeline of events that led to disorder in Coolock, Mr Harris said on Monday, July 15 the contractor wished to move onto the premises between 3am and 4am, which went off without an incident.
Further protests then took place from around 8.15am and at around 10am the “situation started to turn ugly”.
He said a digger and mattresses were burned and a member of the security staff was injured.
A call went out to draw on personnel from across the Dublin Metropolitan Region and Mr Harris said the process for members to “disengage” from what they were doing and travel to Coolock properly equipped “just took time”.
He said there were newly attested gardai at the scene that day, four of whom he met the following day.
He said that by noon, there were some members of the public order unit present. By 1pm, two full public order units were in attendance at the Malahide Road, comprising 50 members, when there were around 100 protesters at the scene.
He said the protesters were a mixture of locals who were genuinely concerned and people “driven by prejudice and extremism”.
He continued: “I do think there are lessons to be learned from this. We’re going through our own review, but I think there’s lessons to be learned by other organisations and other departments in respect of this as well.
“I do not think it’s inevitable that on every occasion that we have some of these centres open that it has to be attended with such disorder.
“It is regrettable that we’ve seen it, and it’s regrettable that it seems to be a greater reoccurrence, but I do think it should never be thought of as an inevitable factor of this, it shouldn’t be.”
He also praised the work of gardai in Coolock in recent days to deescalate tensions in the aftermath of the disorder.
“Over the last number of evenings, rather than having public order units on the Malahide Road, it has just been a couple of guards, none of them in uniform, and they’ve been on patrol, they’ve engaged with the protesters that are there and managed them without huge overt displays of force.
“Protest is a normal activity in a democratic society, what obviously is not acceptable then is where it spills over into violence, crime and criminal damage.”
Assistant Commissioner Angela Willis said there have been 34 arrests so far in relation to the incident at Crown Paints since July 15, and 26 people charged with 46 charges before the courts.
She said there were eight cautions to adults and juveniles, seven incidents of criminal damage, and six incidents of criminal damage by fire.
Ms Willis said they had been a difficult number of days but she didn’t believe that gardaí’s relationship with the community had been “harmed significantly” as a result.
“We have responded to over 400 protests so far this year, and a handful have caused us problems.”
She said that some gardaí had body-won cameras and that footage would be used as part of the investigations.
She said ten members have been tasked with manually trawling through 3,000 hours of CCTV footage from Coolock, and so far 110 hours have been spent going through 68 hours of that footage.
Asked if there was a quicker way of doing this, Mr Harris said: “Within the legislative provisions that we have at the moment, no. We need further legislation to allow us in effect to use software to make digital identification, not just of individuals but of objects.”
Asked about if over 20,000 hours of CCTV footage from the Dublin riots in November had been gone through, Mr Harris said this was not physically possible.
“This is a very slow and laborious process, really like an analogue process against digital evidence.”
