This article is from page 6 of the 2006-10-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
AS the last of the evacuated Crowe Street families returned to their homes over the weekend, life in Gort slowly began to approach something close to normal.
The majority of the 50 displaced households returned home on Wednesday evening but, due to an extended forensic examination, the six houses closest to number 67 Crowe Street were forced to wait until the weekend.
“Most of the people moved back AT this stage, we don’t know what lessons from Abbeylara, the Garda implemented in the closing stages of the Gort siege.
That’s because there was no independent verification of what caused members of the Garda’s Emergency Response Unit (ERU) to open fire on Anthony Burke. All we have is the Garda’s version of events. All we know for sure is that Mr Burke was shot in the chest and badly injured.
But while there is a dearth of hard facts, there are numerous questions.
One of the most significant of these is why the ERU’s less-than-lethal beanbag rounds apparently failed to incapacitate Mr Burke. into their houses during the week but I know one family who lived very close and only went back last night (Saturday),” said one Crowe Street resident.
“It was hard for them to go back – it was just outside of their wall that the man fell. It’s a big shock for all of us.
His wife and children were evacu ated over their back wall.”
The HSE’s Critical Incident Response team arrived in Gort on Thursday. They are continuing to offer counseling services to anyone Was it a technical glitch? If so, why were the ERU equipped with beanbags at-all? After all, the Patten Commission on policing in Northern Ireland found such “impact devices” to be “tremendously” unreliable.
Equally, was it to do with the ERU’s weapons training? According to Fine Gael’s Justice Spokesman, Jim O’ Keefe, the ERU has had to use Defence Forces’ firing ranges since the Garda’s “tactics town” in Templemore was demolished and the firing range in Dublin was closed down.
Was the decision to close these facilities taken at the highest levels of the force? If so, is it credible to expect the chief superintendent headeffected by the siege.
“It will be tough for the people living close by. The police were not going to do anything about the broken windows and doors, but they have decided to replace them, so it won’t be so much of a reminder,” continued the Crowe Street resident. “People are gob-smacked that this would happen with him. He was a very quiet fellow. He had a few drinks, maybe sometimes he had a few too many, but he was a lovely quite man. There were never any ing the internal enquiry to objectively criticise his own superiors, in a rigidly hierarchical organisation like the Garda?
Other questions surrounding the Gort siege derive out of what has been independently established about what happened at Abbeylara. The Barr Tribunal heard that when ERU members killed John Carthy, they were following their training and instructions to open fire on the central body mass or torso of the target. They did so in the belief that there was a clear danger to the lives of other gardaí – a clear requirement of Garda regulations in the use of firearms. rows or any police cars arriving up at the house.”
As the dust begins to settle, locals are now beginning to focus on how the siege was handled by gardaí and how the reputation of Gort will be affected by the media attention.
“People have been talking about Abbeylara and talking about Gort but you have to be in close proximity to it to really know what was going on. There was no other way of doing it. The police were very open and transparent and let us know what was hapMr Justice Barr subsequently found that the positioning of gardaí at wrong locations exacerbated any threat that existed to the life of gardaí.
At Gort, did scene commanders position their personnel in the safest feasible locations?
The Barr report also found, on the basis of evidence from international policing experts, that had the ERU been equipped with two specially trained firearms support dogs to attack John Carthy as he left his home, it was “likely” that he would be alive today.
These dogs, known as “non-compliant” dogs would be “of great value” in a future “Abbeylara type situpening every step of the way,” continued the resident. “We had a man here from The Sun offering money to anyone who had a photograph of him. We have had enough of that kind of scum.”
“This is not a small incident, it is very serious but this is a strong community and we will take it in our stride,” said Niamh Clune of GRACE.
Gort locals wishing to speak to a HSE councillor should contact 0949372882. ation”, the report concluded. So, how near is the ERU to receiving “noncompliant” dog support?
Finally, two of the ERU’s dark navy Isuzu Trooper jeeps drove at great speed along the Gort Road in Ennis, in the direction of Gort, at approximately 9.30 a.m. on the morning of the siege.
Were these jeeps carrying the first ERU teams to the scene? If so, were the people of Gort at greater risk in the ten hours it took the ERU to arrive?
And was the reported movement by gardaí, of journalists to a position well out of sight of the siege, at 9.50 a.m., linked to the ERU’s arrival?