Cllr questions ‘zero’ drug figures

There has been no detections of persons caught possessing drugs for sale and supply in the Bailieborough Garda District in the first three months of 2020 - or in the same period of 2019.

The statistic prompted local Councillor Carmel Brady to question the validity of the figures when they were presented to the members of the county Joint Policing Committee (JPC) meeting last Friday, June 5. She said she was coming under serious “pressure” from people within her community and the wider Cootehill area, which is attached to Bailieborough District, to highlight the issue of drug abuse and demand that action is taken by gardaí. “I just don’t know how it can be,” Cllr Brady told the online meeting, which was tuned into by Chief Superintendent John O’Reilly and other senior gardaí from across the county. She stated that there was a video circulating widely on social media allegedly depicting a person engaged in drug use on Main Street in Cootehill during the shutdown period. She said too that the low figures were not reflective of what was happening “on the ground” in towns and villages across the county. The data, contained in the three month snapshot of crime incidents recorded in Cavan between January-March 2020, by comparison, showed Cavan District had five detections for possession for sale and supply, up one on 2019. But Chief Supt O’Reilly said the figures presented were only a “snapshot” of a period in time.

Dog unit

He provided an update also, when questioned by Sinn Fein TD Pauline Tully, regarding a proposal to get a dog unit for the region. While the unit he said has been available in the past, and will be in the future in the newly realigned and expanded Garda divisional structure, it was hoped that one local member would be trained with a drug sniffer and possibly explosive detection canine. He added too that stations closed to better manage cross-infection during the Covid-19 health crisis will all now reopen.