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EMPTY CITY STREETS are a feature of the pandemic that never seem normal even if they have become the norm.
Drive or walk through Dublin right now and things feel particularly stark, with many of the shuttered shops suffering the effects of persistent closure over the last few months.
The near deserted city has also led to various reports of increased anti-social behaviour, but whether this is indeed the case or just a symptom of greater visibility is uncertain.
In a statement to TheJournal.ie, gardaí said that Public Order Offences were up 6% during 2020 and that this reflects “significant enforcement of Covid-19 regulations”.
There were also “significant increases” in detection under drugs legislation including simple possession up 12% and possession of drugs for sale and supply up 19%.
The circumstances around this week’s violent mugging in the IFSC may be unclear at present, but the incident has been raised as an example of the need for an even greater policing presence.
Even aside from this incident, community outreach workers have been saying that empty streets are a problem that they have been persistently raising.
CEO of the Mendicity Institution Louisa Santoro told TheJournal.ie that services for vulnerable people are already limited and have become even more stretched.
There’s really no one around and we we have had quite a number of instances of people being beaten up. To the point where Covid-19 isn’t the top of their list in terms of threat. It is a risk but the reality of sleeping outside and coming to some harm from somebody else is much more common.
Santoro explains that people sleeping rough have been moving much further outside the city and beyond the usual canal line. This pushes them even further away from services like food or healthcare they may require.
Two people who had been sleeping rough in Phoenix Park died over Christmas and over 50 deaths have been recorded in the city over the past year.
The obvious issue of begging becoming less of an option for people also gives them less of a reason to stay in the city. Begging at cars stopped at traffic lights has become a much more common feature in Dublin, with fewer people walking around that may donate.
“At the moment, even if you were considering it, if you were sitting down with a cup and you were prepared to do that, you rely on footfall,” Santoro says.
At the moment the city is deserted, there’s no retail, diners or revellers, nothing at all.
Each outreach worker who spoke to TheJournal.ie about the current situation praised the work of the gardaí, pointing out that they have a particularly demanding role in managing Covid-safe behaviours as well as policing.
An Garda Síochána says that there are two separate an ongoing operations “specifically focus on addressing anti-social behaviour and drug dealing”. These are ‘Operation Spire’ in the north inner city and ‘Operation Pier’ in the south inner city.
Gardaí say these operations “involve a collaborative effort of uniform, plain clothes and specialist personnel being deployed overtly and covertly”.
The force says its operations also include “planned days of action, intelligence-led surveillance operations and planned checkpoints and patrols”.
Challenge
Tony Duffin of the Ana Liffey Drug Project says that from his point of view there hasn’t been an increase in anti-social behaviour but that there is a greater challenge in engaging with people.
“Covid makes it difficult for everybody, including outreach teams, to deliver services in a safe fashion. You’ve got to encourage people to wear masks, obviously hand-washing and cough etiquette are tools of the trade right now.
But agencies are out doing that work throughout the pandemic. There’s a lot of great work going on in the city but depending on where you are in the city you may see antisocial behaviour, but that’s not because guards aren’t doing the job, they are, it’s just a big challenge.
What Duffin stresses is that may of the issues currently being faced by people in the city are also present in so-called normal times.
Councillor Mannix Flynn agrees and says this is the case for both vulnerable people and those going about their daily lives.
“I just think with the anti-social behaviour issue the problem is a lack of any kind of response. This has been an ongoing issue,” he says.
The point of the matter as far as I would be concerned is that the city in general is not well managed when it comes to people’s safety. That is the safety of those who are going about their lawful business, and also those who are going about in their own vulnerable ways like sleeping rough.
Flynn pointed to the recent RTÉ Investigates programme which spoke to some of those living on the streets of Dublin and the sense of fear they lived under.
He added that some areas of the city that have seen changes to road layouts have resulted in less passing traffic and a sense of “foreboding” because they are now empty.
“A lot of people the city actually don’t feel safe, gardaí might tell you that it is a very safe city according to them, but the reality for a lot of people is that they don’t feel very safe at all. ”
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40% of people who live in the USA are suffering from a chronic illness of one sort or another. Think on that. That’s nearly half of the population of the USA. Pesticides, unlabled GMO foods, food riven with additives, growth hormones, ammonia, have a huge bearing on that figure of 40%. When Monsanto can place its people in the Supreme Court, and on the board of the FDA there will never be any chance of that number of 40% decreasing. The number will only rise.
@Dave Doyle: Sedentary lifestyles and too much calorie-laden, salty processed food is the cause of those problems.
Glyphosate is used just as widely in Europe as it is in the US, so there’s very little basis for your above post wrt. pesticides.
@Dave Doyle: Likely nothing to do with Monsanto or Glyphosate but to do with the adulteration of the food chain with sulphite preservatives & sulphite colorants.
Sulphur dioxide & sulphites are the only one of 14 allergens that can be legally HIDDEN in food if the levels are below 10mg/kg or 10ml/l. Imagine if same rules applied to peanuts.
The sulphites are driving chronic inflammation which we suspect is exacerbating a newly defined disease called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome that may already be an epidemic in developed nations even Ireland. The disease is an immune disease likely triggered by environmental factors such as smog, diesel exhaust, of gassing polyurethane plastics and other household chemicals we assume are safe WD40, 3 in 1 oil, deodorant propellants….very long list.
Once the genie is out of the bottle, Mast Cells within the immune system start to misidentify threats and one threat it mis-identifies are sulphites in food which are now ubiquitous. Sulphites are used to cheat on shelf life and cheat on colour.
Acute exposure by thousands of personnel to vast amounts of known sensitizer chemicals at the Air Corps at Baldonnel has left a medical trail that will be very valuable to any scientist looking to get to the bottom of this problem. Young men suffered MCAS symptoms in late teens/early 20s when the measured profile of the illness in the USA is confined 80% to middle aged women.
Monsanto is a convenient bogie man but the answer is likely simpler and happening every time we eat breakfast, dinner and tea as well as nibbles and a glass of wine.
@Chemical Brothers: A well researched, reasonable and balanced response but you’re dealing with Journal prejudice where everybody goes off pushing their own little barrow.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the primary agency of the European Union for risk assessments regarding food safety.
In October 2015, EFSA concluded that ‘glyphosate is unlikely to pose a hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential’.
@James Brady: Study after study has shown that is does cancer -Common weed killer glyphosate increases cancer risk by 41%, study says https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/14/health/us-glyphosate-cancer-study-scli-intl/index.html
Weedkiller glyphosate a ‘substantial’ cancer factor
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47633086
2 recent cases in US have been win by people who sued and win.
Have you ever wondered why cancer is skyrocketing why bees are dying etc
@GO GREEN: Jury Rules Against Bayer in California Glyphosate and Cancer Trial https://www.agriculture.com/news/crops/jury-rules-against-bayer-in-california-glyphosate-and-cancer-trial
@James Brady: that conlusion only came after the heavyweight German corporations got involved. The WHO has been compromised for a good few years now.
@Cormac Ó Braonáin: actually, the WHO considers that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic”, inline with findings from the IARC. It’s the EFSA, completely unrelated to the WHO, that is compromised.
@GO GREEN: But the resurges agreed that the findings are limited. Also it is unlikely to cause cancer when handling in a proper way. Everything can be harmful if not proper used.
“The plaintiff’s assumed technical knowledge does not excuse the lack of information on the product and its harmful effects – a farmer is not a chemist.”
French judges appear to show sense. The State Claims Agency has managed to successfully argue in an Irish Court that military aircraft mechanics in the Irish Air Corps with ZERO medical training were able to diagnose themselves with chemical injure thus starting the statute clock.
SCA have argued that an Air Corps technician going to an doctor asking did chemicals harm me and doctor saying maybe or maybe not means the technician had “knowledge” that the chemicals had harmed him.
Like I said the French judge appears to have displayed common sense against a formidable corporate foe.
have your say