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A SENIOR GARDA has said that An Garda Síochána won’t be “resting on its laurels” in its efforts to thwart gangland crime following the guilty verdict given against Freddie Thompson yesterday.
The 37-year-old Thompson, with an address at Loreto Road, Maryland in Dublin, was found guilty by three judges at the Special Criminal Court of the murder of David Douglas on 1 July 2016.
Assistant commissioner John O’Driscoll, with responsibility for special crime operations, told RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland that while the conviction was a welcome one from the gardaí’s perspective, work continues to bring others involved in Douglas’ murder to justice.
“It was just one of a number of unfortunate incidents where people were murdered by criminal gangs involved in the feud,” he said. “Fortunately, we have intervened successfully in excess of 50 cases where there was threat to life.”
O’Driscoll said the conviction of Thompson in relation to gangland killing was one of a number of other recent convictions connected to the Hutch-Kinahan feud.
He said: “We had a conviction of James Quinn in Spain in June in relation to the murder of Gary Hutch. There was a conviction in January related to the murder of Michael Barr at Sunset House.
We’ve had convictions in relation to the seizing of firearms in Green Oak. We’re now in a phase of achieving convictions in the many interventions we’ve made, where the investigations of murder have come to a successful conclusion.
When queried about the case against Thompson being reliant largely on circumstantial evidence, the assistant commissioner said that it wasn’t necessary for a case like this that features a lot of circumstantial evidence to be heard at the Special Criminal Court.
“Clearly, it was the extent of the evidence, and I sat through some of it, there were literally hours upon hours of CCTV,” he said. “There was a huge case built up by detectives at Kevin Street and Kilmainham.”
In this case we may not have convicted the person whom it may be alleged fired the shot, so to speak, but that also follows on from a conviction in Spain on 21 June where the Spanish authorities achieved a conviction in relation to James Quinn.
Further work would be done now by An Garda Síochána, he said, to intervene when a person’s life was threatened, continue seizing illegal drugs and discover firearms that gangs are using.
“There’s a determination on our part to dismantle all the criminal gangs involved, and we’re in for the long haul,” O’Driscoll said. “This is a phase of success, but we won’t be resting on our laurels.”
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Maybe this Assistant Commissioner could have a quite word with the Assistant commissioner in charge of Road Policing, who is certainly not resting on his laurels, sending out a memo (leaked and i wonder by whom) stating named gardai in the Dublin district are not generating enough fines etc…..
@Joseph Dempsey: there shouldn’t be an issue with that kind of memo. X amount of people means Y percentage are likely to be breaking laws like parking, speeding and evading tax or insurance so there is a real number of fines to try and achieve. The problem comes when it is done for decades without accountability or oversight because then corruption sneaks in.
Well done Gardaí for taking this Thug off the streets
For every Fat Freddie that’s convicted there’s two more Fat Frogs waiting to take direction from him in his prison cell, while he lays back with one eye on his flatscreen and the other on his smart phone.
The Gardai should not have allowed this gang to gain such a strong foothold in Dublin/ Ireland in the first instance. It’s not as if this gang just appeared out of the blue.
The Gardai dismantled the gang in Limerick only after innocent people got killed by said gang.
This reminds me of the saying “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted” a bit pointless.
@Eamonn Kiely: Gardai are not the bosses of the crime gangs they can’t prevent them from growing. It never pointless putting a murderer behind bars
@Eamonn Kiely: maybe you should become a guard since you know so much about it?
@Gareth Cooney: yes I couldn’t agree with you more it’s never pointless putting a murderer away. The more murderers taken off the streets the better.
My point was that the gardai stated they would not be resting on their laurels after this conviction. They should not have allowed it to get this far.
@John Lally: Perfectly happy in my chosen career, thank you
@Eamonn Kiely: Unfortunately Eamonn you just cant pick people off the street, years of detective work required to build cases that will stick in Court.
@Ger Murphy: If anyone deserves a life sentence its this man, the Gardai must be delighted they have been at this guy for years say hes orchestrated more murders than Tony Soprano.
@Eamonn Kiely: So you are saying he should not have been prosecuted??
@eddie horgan: please read my comments above
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