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ON THIS DAY last year, Owen Maguire was shot four times in Drogheda, Co Louth.
This is seen as the start of a feud between two gangs in the town. By November the situation began to boil over with a range violent attacks taking place.
Locals are becoming increasingly fed up of the feud, and efforts are now underway to bring it to an end. Gardaí have stepped up armed patrols, and the town is eager to make next month’s Fleadh Cheoil pass without a hitch.
However, ending a cycle of violence like this isn’t easy, and often requires a community-wide approach.
In this week’s podcast, TheJournal.ie reporter Garreth MacNamee and Ged Nash, a Labour senator who has represented Louth for two decades, join us to examine the origins of the feud, the scale of the violence so far and the impact on the local population, but also how gardaí and the community can take action to prevent the situation spiraling.
Find a full list of where the podcast is available here.
The Explainer / SoundCloud
This episode was put together by presenter Nicky Ryan, producer Aoife Barry, and executive producer Christine Bohan. Design by Palash Somani.
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All the boards discussing this feud say the same thing, they hold the gardaí responsible for the escalation of it. In the beginning, when young kids did what they did to appear cool or make what they thought was some easy money, they soon found out the people they were dealing with (no pun intended) imposed enormous interest rates and debts of a few hundred euros quickly ran into several thousand euros.
Kids are stupid, they make mistakes. Their parents went to the gardaí who shrugged their shoulders and said “what do you expect us to do about it, it’s your problem”. This was where this entire problem could have been stopped before it started, but the business model was allowed to flourish. It worked for the gangs. The Credit Union’s were the only hope for many of these families, for others they had no hope. The gangs realised instilling fear into loved ones worked, that was their business model, meanwhile they fought among themselves, the shootings began.
Eventually the gardaí got additional resources, however along with the Armed Response Unit these were used to target the feuding gangs and not protect the people they continued to target with petrol bombs. In effect the additional gardaí protected the gangs from each other while their victims continued to suffer.
So now, while the kids of Drogheda don’t sleep at night wondering if a petrol bomb is going to target their house, like the one down the road, the gangs sleep great with the gardaí watching over them. It should be the other way around. It should be the gangs not sleeping for fear of the gardaí.
@Arch Angel: always passing the buck and blaming the state .. the people to.blame are the importers and distributors of drugs.. if they hadn’t started doing this them there would be no problem with gangs fighting over drugs
@John Kelly: what has the state really done in regards protecting its citizens from any number of imported drugs? You can buy drugs from around the world in every small town on this island. We have our own cartel.
What your talking about is minor battles, this war is much bigger and was won a long time ago. Our country can’t put up a reasonable fight against any imported drug, let alone all of them. Once the dealers reach a certain level they become unstoppable, controlling an illegal trade either from a penthouse, a jail cell or a different jurisdiction. Best the Gardaí can do? Make sure they don’t get hurt.
Our state has failed at every level. Silver lining is so has everywhere else.
@John Kelly: To be fair, while the argument will always be made that if there wasn’t people consuming drugs then there wouldn’t be people selling them, there’s another side to this situation. It’s the job of the gardaí to prevent crime, and when when parents go to them saying that, yes their kids have done something stupid the gardaí were in a position to deal with the kids and prevent this situation from ever taking off in the first place. They didn’t do that. Instead they let it get out of hand and then, months later when houses were being petrol bombed and feuding gangs members shooting one another they called for reinforcements and the armed response unit. They said the community had a problem, when they themselves were instrumental in causing it when they turned their back on desperate parents who begged them for help.
This was caused by the gangs giving away the drugs to kids, then when they ran up a debt they’d come back claiming they’d owed thousands, it’d go up every week. It’s Drogheda now but it’ll be every other town in the country within a few years unless the gardaí and other agencies come down heavily on these gangs with a multidisciplinary approach to the problem. Ridiculous outdated approaches of negotiating with them or trying to ‘making life difficult for them’ just won’t work and will, in all likelihood, have no effect. These are cold blooded killers who will stop at nothing, and we need to adopt the same approaches other countries have, if that means arming our police to the teeth. So be it.
The war on drugs has spectacularly failed in Drogheda, hope the community can some day claim their town back.
@Artugal: The war on drugs has failed full stop. A new approach is needed. Take these thugs out of business
@johnbunton: oh I agree, just failed spectacularly in Drogheda. It’s a large town after all – a place where many locals have historical connections to the place; it isn’t an urban metropolis full of temporary residents. The damage of this fued will define many aspects of life in this town for a very long time. There will be no escaping it.
@Artugal: Temporary residents…defines those who travel into the town thus the reason they’re called travellers.
@johnbunton:
While I fully agree the war on drugs has failed, some form of legalisation is necessary but if you think the thugs involved will all of a sudden take up 9 to 5 jobs you are mistaken, they will just move on to another, most likely illegal enterprise.
They want easy money, are not prepared to work for it and don’t care who they hurt to get it.
@Patrick Nolan: yes I agree but it would certainly limit their options. Garda resources could be put into tackling the likes of burglaries and more community policing. Harsh sentences then need to be given by judges for those who engage in crime. Sentences that will really sting. Even people caught engaging in anti social behavior should be punished by being sent to some kind of labor camps and re-education centers which teaches people how to behave properly in society. I think all this would make a huge difference.
@johnbunton: exactly. We should all take a moment to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
@johnbunton:
Agreed
Begins with K ends with S
@Alan Kennedy: Krispies? ;)
@Alan Kennedy: Keratoconjunctivitis?
@Alan Kennedy: Klingons
If only we had some sort of fast track way of incarcerating these thugs.
Like a Special Criminal Court, where people are found guilty on the word of a senior Garda.
@John Fairclough: Wasn’t Green Street Court in Dublin used like you suggest to get try IRA defendants during the troubles
Maybe something like that should be reintroduced.
@Karen Delaney: It never went away just in another building now.
Eh Ged Nash! I will pass on listening to that waffler.
I was brought up in Dundalk, and Drogheda was considered a no-go area even 25-30 years ago. Whether that was normal town rivalry or something more sinister, I really don’t know, but we were afraid to go out there. Contrary to popular belief, there was little enough random inter-personal violence in Dundalk; Drogheda was thought to be different.
Sorry to all decent Drogheda people, but that’s what was believed.
Had a listen there.
Was it too difficult to find a presenter who could pronounce the word Louth?
It’s not pronounced Loud.
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