28
Jan
2013
By Calvin at 14:54 GMT, 13 years ago
Budget cuts have been affecting UK police services for some time now, but it seems that Gardai cutbacks in the Republic of Ireland are at least as bad when it comes to rural policing.
The following article by Cormac O’Keefe of the Irish Examiner:
Having already braced themselves for the imminent closure of 95 Garda stations this week, rural communities are now confronted with the impact of cuts to dedicated teams.
The cuts are hitting both detective units — which investigate crimes such as burglaries, robberies, assaults, sex crimes, and murders — and specialist squads, including drug units, crime prevention units and traffic corps.
The severe cuts to Garda numbers are forcing police bosses to remove officers from these dedicated units to fill holes in core, uniform policing. This is on top of unfilled vacancies in the detective units.
The Cavan-Monaghan Divisional Drugs Unit has been disbanded and its four gardaí and one detective sergeant have been re-deployed into the general force.
Garda bosses are now considering centralising local traffic units into divisional headquarters, which Garda sources say will hit both rural traffic policing and normal policing hard............. continued
Read the rest of the report at this link: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/news-special-gardai-cutbacks--rural-policing-badly-hit-220883.html
See also new Rural Crime and Security Facebook page at this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rural-Crime-Security/108907675954933#%21%2Fpages%2FRural-Crime-Security%2F108907675954933
