An unremarkable tale of everyday Garda professionalism and decency shows the good work the best of our guardians of the peace do, writes Donal O’Keeffe.
It was a cool enough morning in late October and I was heading down Oliver Plunkett Street for Winthrop Street to get a late breakfast in O’Flynns. A thin man in shabby clothing was thrown down and very still in the back doorway of Penney’s.
Nobody else was paying him any attention, so I crouched down and spoke to him, touching his face to establish that he was warm and breathing. He was wearing a hoody and his clothing was pretty dirty. The smell of alcohol was overpowering. I tried to revive him, gently shaking his shoulder and calling to him. No joy.
A woman came along to tell me that he was lying wrong (on his right side) and I needed to turn him over. As usual in these cases, I tried vainly to remember my first aid classes. I wasn’t at all sure she was wrong but I wasn’t crazy about moving him if he was hurt. A security guard loomed over us but did nothing.
Then a young Garda came along, parked her pushbike by a lamp-post and took charge.
She revived him almost immediately – either by Garda Jedi or perhaps by pinching his forefinger- and she spoke to him using his first name. The poor man was stocious drunk and he had all the appearance of someone who has had a very hard life. He could have been any age between 40 and 70.
I helped the Garda to sit him up and I was shocked by how thin he was. I remember thinking that his legs seemed scarcely strong enough to bear what little weight he had.
The Guard spoke to the man kindly and respectfully. She asked the security guard how long the man had been there. The security guard replied ‘About ten minutes’. (I may be wronging the security guard. It’s entirely possible that he may have actually called the Garda. It’s also possible that the terms of his employment – or insurance concerns – prevented him from assisting.)
A young woman who also knew the man by first name came along to give out to the Garda for “arresting” him but the Garda told her – clearly and calmly – that she didn’t want to arrest anyone but it was her duty to make sure this man – again she called him by his first name – was safe and she would do whatever she had to do to ensure that.
Someone suggested that someone should get the poor man some water. When nobody else did, I went to the shop and got him a bottle. When I came back, he declined my offer. He seemed a bit more lucid but he was still pretty out of it.
I asked the Garda if there was anything I could do to help and she said, no thanks, she had called an ambulance and she’d stay till it arrived. I said “Thank you, Guard”, and said good luck to the poor man sitting on the ground, and went on my way to my breakfast. Later, I felt guilty that I can afford to splash out €8 on grub and had given that man not a penny.
Why am I telling you this story? After all, this is really no big deal, I know: just a public servant doing her job. Just an unremarkable tale of kindness and everyday professionalism.
So why am I telling you? Well, we all know that there’s an awful lot very wrong with our country, not least that we allow desperately vulnerable people to fall between the cracks and then we outsource vital services to brilliant charities like the Simon Community, the St Vincent DePaul and Cork Penny Dinners.
We also all know only too well that our police force is far from perfect. Morale amongst rank-and-file gardaí is at an all-time low and the force has been rocked by recent scandals and revelations. At the time of writing, there’s still every chance we’ll have a Garda strike by the end of this week.
We all know how bad things are. But one day last week, a decent Garda did her job well and treated a fellow citizen – a fellow human being in trouble – with kindness and respect. No big deal, at all. But in another sense, it’s a huge big deal.
I’ve been researching a piece on community policing for another newspaper lately and I’ve spent a bit of time with a couple of community Gardai. Every school they call to, they get asked by kids if they ever shot anyone or got shot at. One garda caused huge disappointment when he said that, in twenty years on the force, he had never once even used his baton.
That’s kids. Still, though, maybe it’d be nice if they knew that being a cop in Ireland is usually not really a glamourous or action-packed job at all. Maybe it’d be nice if we reared our children to know that Irish police are, first and foremost, ‘guardians of the peace’. Maybe it’d be nice if a child’s first instinct was to ask our guards “Did you ever help a homeless man and treat him with dignity and warmth?”
We’re all very quick in this country to complain and I’m a great man for that myself, but I do think that when someone does their job well, their employers should be told.
I tweeted the official Garda account just to let them know that while one of their colleagues would no doubt say she was ‘only doing her job’, she is, nonetheless, a credit to the force.
And now I’m telling her employer:
You.
That’s why I told you this story.
