25. Policing and Racism in Ireland

[Music] Welcome to Police in Ireland, the podcast that seeks to capture the experiences people have with the police. I'm Dr Vicky Conway and I'm passionate about listening to people for more different walks of life, but I hope they experience our police on Gaurav Shukhana. [Music] This episode is going to be slightly different to previous ones. For various reasons, the question of race and policing has been receiving increasing comment in the Irish media. I've seen a steady stream of people suggesting that it isn't an issue, or that there is no evidence to support a suggestion that racism is a problem in Irish policing. It's true, we don't have the steady stream of evidence that we see in other jurisdictions, where we can say with the degree of certainty how much more often those of black or Asian ethnicity, for instance, are likely to be stopped and searched by the police. This is because the Guardian refused to collect that data, a problem in itself, which will come back to later. But that doesn't mean there's no evidence. We've covered the theme of race and policing a number of times, and guests like Mahal, Estafani, and Israel have shared their personal experiences of racism. In this episode, I'm collating all the evidence and research that does exist. We're going to review 20 years' worth of research and data. We're going to speak to no less than five different experts. Dr. Sam, O'Brien Allinger, Dr. Egon Malkahi, Dr. James Carr, Dr. Lucy Michael, and herita, Oleg Anatham, of youths against racism and inequality. And here, about the findings of their research. And yes, most of these contributors are white-settled people, a product of the lack of diversity in the university sector. We will reference over a dozen studies that have been conducted on this theme. These are all the studies that I'm aware of, and one thing is very clear. Not one study has found that racism is not an issue in on-guardishie corner. There is no evidence to support that claim. We'll begin with a study from Amnesty conducted in Ireland in 2001, with over 600 black and ethnic minority respondents. Which found that 25% of racist incidents were at the hands of Gardi. 37% of travelers and 54% of black Irish people felt they had experienced discrimination from the Gardi. 56% felt they were not treated fairly by Gardi. 61% said that Gardi did not take racist incidents seriously, and 57% said they would not be welcome as members of the Gardi. As we'll see, within on-guardishie corner, attention began to be paid to the issue of diversity around the time that immigration brought increased diversity into Ireland. But of course, the Traveler Amnesty community has had long-standing concerns with policing in Ireland. I spoke to Dr. Egon Mulcahi, Associate Professor in the School of Sociology in UCD, about research he conducted on the experiences of members of the Traveler community. That research was largely based on extended interviews and focus groups with over 40 members of the Traveler community and over 40 police officers, conducted in 2002 to 2003, with some follow-up interviews conducted over the following year. I suppose in some ways it was familiar from findings from other studies. But the great irony of course is that more work has been done about travelers in the middle of justice system within the UK context, then within Ireland. And this just seemed, you know, ironically further evidence of marginalization, you know, when you don't even recognize something as a problem. That in itself is just a further indication of how, how epitope you wrote it. It is as a problem. I suppose there were three things in particular maybe. The first really was the issue of reputation and the extent to which the broad status of travelers was demeaned within the eyes of the police. You know, it showed different ways through which travelers were talked about by the police. It showed a different, or I suppose a specific characterization in terms of the unreliability, the untrustworthiness. And you know what many guards would have believed was the inherent deceitfulness of travelers. You know, they were not to be believed. And of course this also was compounded by their mobility. You know, this was kind of an affront. This was an insult to the job of the police. You know, it was taskist to know who everyone is, where they are, about their doing it all times. And the very fact of being mobile was, you know, seen almost as an effort to, to toward the police activities of the guards. So that broad issue of, of to stain that these were a group who were considered perhaps not fully civilized. Considered not fully integrated into norms of respectability and decency, who were considered, as I said, deceitful, but also maybe always the propensity for violence, always, almost outlaws, almost outlaws. So one issue I think was that, that first notion of kind of reputation. There were two other issues probably that are worth highlighting. I think in particular one was the, the issue of over policing. And the extent to which travelers reviewed as a problem community. And therefore when the police became involved, they became involved very enthusiastically. Lots of police would show up. And in fact, anything travelers did was viewed as an opportunity for, you know, additional detective work. In other words, you know, let's always check the, the taxid insurance of any vehicle that a traveler is driving. So, so you had that sense of over policing. And then you also had kind of complement in that ironically. Under policing, the kind of under protection of, of travelers. And in a way kind of one of the problems that travelers pose with the police is that they're mobile, that they're kind of invisible to the police. And yet they're so, they're so obviously present. They're so visible at the same time. So, you know, a traveler encampment. It's not hidden away behind a luxury villa or in some enormous compound with security guards. It's they are on the side of the road. Traveler encampments are easily visited. They're easily seen. The travelers were in effect. They were viewed as a problem if they were thought to have committed crimes against members of the settled community. But when their own victimization came into play, they simply weren't given, I think, to you care, they weren't shown to you respect. They weren't given a professional service. And again, the idea that, you know, traveler, a traveler committing crime against another traveler. It wasn't a crime that was almost something to be well met and sorted out themselves. And so you had that distance that remove and some of it ironically was caused by concern on the part of the guards for their own safety. Oh, we'll be careful going into a traveling site in case we're attacked. And of course, you know, certainly there's been a fractious relationship between the police and the guards historically. But if you think about that in context, what it really means is that someone on that campsite has called for help. And the police are too scared to enter the campsite. You know, I'm not saying this was always in every way the case. But if you had instances of that, then what does it mean for the safety and welfare of the people in the in the traveler site who have requested help and who are not getting it or are not getting quickly or appropriately and so on. So you had, I think, those three overlapping issues, the issue of reputation, the issue of overpolicing and the issue of under protection. And, you know, it was a small scale study, all things considered. And yet those findings seemed. You know, I thought that really was an accurate sense of relations between police and travelers and broad terms. The mobility of members of the traveler community was quite central to this. And a lot of it had to do with with the issue of mobility again, the so, you know, travelers complaining about police involvement in evictions complaining what always being done, whether that be from a campsite, whether that be because you're showing up in a bar and they don't want to literally in and please go home and so on. But also as far as the police were concerned, one guard or a member recall how, you know, when travelers moved into an area, you know, settled people residents would ring up and make it complaint and the guys would go down and say, you know, where are you going to be staying tomorrow night. And, and also trying to generate prosecutions, whether or not they would go anywhere but simply as a means of turning the heat up and making it uncomfortable for the general. and even if no formal prosecution emerged down the road, the idea that this was simply, that that law enforcement was used as a way to kind of address a crime, but rather it's a way to address a social situation or a social move the mind, let someone else deal with them. This was the, and the guards who were interviewed, they were upfront about that. I mean, I think historically, certainly that would have been much more prominent as a way of dealing with travelers. They were a problem. How are you going to deal with them? As opposed to an orientation, which may be began with, gosh, I wonder what problems travelers are having. I wonder what service we can provide to help the deal with any concerns over crime or order, safety or security and so on. - Aegon commented on the fact that diversity only emerged as an issue to be attended to in the early notice. - Well, certainly individuals, individual status. I mean, the, the irony, of course, is that most of the kind of the diversity policing agenda that emerged in Ireland and the early 2000s, much of that was in response to immigration spurred by the Celtic tiger, people from Romania, people from Poland, people from Nigeria, and it seemed as if that spurred concerns about service provision and about diversity and about equality and about respect, and about ensuring that the police were not behaving in a discriminatory way. So that form of diversity activates policing, whereas the diversity involved in travelers was simply seen as a non-issue. And some of that had to do with whether travelers or when and whether travelers were recognized as an ethnic group, but I think it also reflected a broad concern that any discrimination against travelers was not because of difference, not because of bias, not because of bigotry, not because prejudice on the part of the police, but rather because travelers were an inherently criminogenic and inherently problematic community. So if you are biased against a black Nigerian person, that's racism. If you're biased against a traveler, it's because they never pay their car tax or they're never insured their cars. So the position in respect of travelers, I think, was seen as being granted much more in an assessment of behavior, as opposed to a stance purely on the basis of identity or prejudice. And that I think was how, in a way, such a deep-rooted level of prejudice could be sustained, because it wasn't recognized as prejudice, because it was seen as simply a reflection of the obvious estate, simply of the way things were. That's the way travelers are. And when they get their act together, then we'll be a bit more attentive and so on. I think, trust me, there's no policy talking about putting it in those terms, but I think that was the broad assumption underpinning the behavior of individuals as well as informing how the organization operates. I mean, it is ludicrous that diversity was recognized only when people with Polish accents appeared. So yeah, I think it was spread across the organization. I mean, you did one of the things I should say as well, of course, is that some traveler interviewees specifically noted positive actions on the part of individuals. And certainly, I think the activities emanating from the cooperation and cultural year and that's when it was first established. I think that was seen as a very positive response on the part of the individuals involved. But I think certainly, from a traveler point of view, there perhaps was seen as a disconnect between that and our policy development service provision and the realities of day-to-day policing. So I think it highlighted the extent to which, to you, judge an organization on the basis of the actions of a few dedicated people or to you, judge it on the basis of business as normal. But certainly, I think the late arrival of discussion about diversity is a telling indictment really of just how invisible travelers were in spite of their great visibility. That their needs were seen as a secondary. They were almost a social embarrassment to be brushed under the trumpet to be let them stay. And they're down the byroads and the laneways of Ireland, let them stay wherever they are. But if they venture into the territory of settled people, we're here to maintain property values. We're here to ensure that the parks remain clean. We're here to ensure that there's no drunkness in pubs and so on. And so many's, too, of course, when you talk about recent immigration patterns, it's not uncommon for people who migrate to want very much to integrate in their new society. It's not uncommon for them to take a drop down in terms of living status ironically. It might be an engineer in India, and you become a bus driver in Dublin or something like that. And one of the tasks then becomes, trying to ensure that your children move up the occupation ladder and so on. And one of the issues then, of course, becomes well when you've got young kids who play hardly, who speak with Karen O'Axson's, but her black how integrated are they? What issues will they have in terms of being recognized as Irish, being granted all of the kind of formal and informal rights that go along with that? Whereas with travelers, this has been such a recurring issue. It's been, for one, to be better word and eternal issue. And the fact that it hasn't been recognized as a problem or stealing with itself is, I think, an indicator of the scale, the goal, really. And some of that comes down to, I think, probably sheer bigotry. Some of it comes down to political cowardice and political vulnerability when it comes to election year in other words, people think that if there might be pro rights, but they're opposed to travel or accommodation. I think many politicians think that it's a very sensible way to get elected, I think, for example, we saw it in the last presidential election when anti-traveler sentiment was expressed quite openly by one of the candidates. And then some parts of the country you received are in movements. So certainly, I think if you look actually at the information that has been gathered, there's certainly evidence to support that travelers have been identified, readings in the organization as a problem population, but really that any efforts to address diversity have a reason not because of travelers, but because of migration trends. I mean, for example, and the efforts to increase diversity within the guard, so we'll get rid of Irish language requirement. We'll reduce the height requirement. That never stopped travelers from joining the guards. So those measures were really undertaken, I think, in terms of the outward face of the organization seen to the addressing diversity, when one key dimension of us, in a way that parlance, I think, some of the debates about indigenous peoples in different countries, that indigenous peoples, well, they're backward. They're somehow different from other minority groups. And I think that same level of-- I mean, one of the best ways this grab is maybe it's just calling it a bigotry that doesn't recognize its health as bigotry. That seems to be in the here-and-reflection of an inherently inferior population group, because the scale of animosity is so alarming, frankly. But if people are holding those beliefs consciously, it's actually a much more troubling situation than I think many of us would wish to acknowledge. In June 2004, Ionan Management Consultants published a human rights audit of on Gardenscheek-O'Connor. This audit came on the back of a council of your program initiated in 1997 on policing in human rights. In response to this, on Gardenscheek-O'Connor created a human rights office in 1999, and the audit was one of the actions taken in support of this work. The audit was conducted through desk-based research, interviews with 17 senior members of the organization, a survey of over 1,200 members, focus groups with over 200 members, meetings of trainers in Templemore and community meetings. The audit heard senior officers claiming certain communities were responsible for higher levels of criminality without any evidence to support these claims. One senior officer wanted all non-nationals to be fingerprinted on arrival in the country. One said that 80% of crime in one area had traveler involvement, again without any supporting evidence. In the survey of Gardee, only 15% believed they had a good relationship with travelers, and only 21% with refugees in a state of emergency. asylum seekers. In focus groups, Gardeau talked about Nigerians playing the race card all the time. It was said there was greater criminality among Nigerians, travelers and refugees, without any evidence. And in the community meetings, they repeatedly heard of a lack of action when ethnic minorities report their crimes and then overzealous checking of tax insurance and identity papers. This simultaneous over and under policing will be a recurring theme in this episode. Ultimately, the Ionen order concluded that on Gardecie Kone is institutionally racist. This term was used by the Stephen Lawrence inquiry into the Metropolitan Police, looking at the failed police response into the murder of a young black man. The inquiry defined that term as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin." It could be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour, which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping, which disadvantage minority ethnic people. Ionen found that this was the case in Ireland as evidence by the way members talked about and treated different ethnicities and the organization's failure to put in place structures to identify and deal with racism. Those structures have still not fully been put in place. When the finding of institutional racism was made against the mat, it sent shockwaves through the system and led to deep reflection and reform. And yet when a similar finding was made in Ireland, from an ordered commissioned by the police themselves, nothing really happened. Perhaps this was because it was the same year that the first Maristribunal reports were published. Or perhaps it was because of a wider failure on the part of the Irish establishment to counter racism. In 2007, the Guardian conducted a study on traveler and ethnic minority attitudes towards the Guardian Shakona. It found that traveler satisfaction levels were at 52% compared to a national satisfaction level of 81%. This report is currently not available online, so I'm unable to go into it in any greater detail. Around this time, Dr. Sam O'Brien-Ollinger, author of Police, Race and Culture in the New Ireland, commenced his field research. This was ethnographic in nature, meaning he's been considerable time with Garde as they went about their job. I just thought at the time that Ireland really was this kind of almost laboratory experiment, there was this window opportunity to capture what was happening at that moment. Around 2007-1910, I suppose, is when you would kind of had enough time for communities to become established, the newer communities since Celtic Tiger Immigration in the mid-1990s, up to the early modernities. Initially, my focus was around class, because I thought there was a longer established negative relationship in history between your working class communities and areas. Also, members of the travelling community was kind of an obvious one. But at the time, I just thought this is the historical moment. I'm kind of really lucky that this is happening right here right now. To get a snapshot of what was going on, because it was such early days in this new relationship between Garde de Chicana and its members of ethnic minority, racialized minority communities. I really kind of the hope was that the more light I could shed on this, the more evidence I could gather about this would convince key decision-makers, ultimately policy makers, those in the Department of Justice especially, but also in Garde de Chicana, to take stock of what was going on and to realise that maybe Ireland is kind of lucky at this juncture, we're at a stage where if we can capture what's going on right now and see the potential for things going the wrong direction, maybe we don't have to make the same mistakes that were made in other jurisdictions and it didn't take an ethnographic approach. So there was a huge amount of time spent with Garde on duty. A lot of infield observations as they were going about their daily routine and also want to want interviews in stations in the back of squad cars, on marked cars. And in the book there's a whole aspect, a whole part, a whole chapter dedicated to what was done, how, where and when. A lot of the locations, the names have been changed because it was very important to protect the identities of everyone participating in the research. But the three main field sites were a large suburban station located in probably, I mean it'd be easy enough to say, look it's the most or one of the most diverse, demographically diverse parts of Dublin. Another field site was in Dublin's north inner city, which for all kinds of other reasons was fascinating when you're looking at issues around race and policing. And then the kind of really obvious third field site that I spent some time there was the Garde National Integration Bureau and detectives working in that role. There was a lot of commonalities across the field sites and put a lot of differences as well. So I suppose the kind of the main features, if you like, of all the findings, it's hard to condense them into a short sound bite. To be honest, there was so much information gathered but there was a sense of very much that Garde's works very unfamiliar with these new communities that they were expected to provide a service to but also police in every sense of those kind of words. So you would find I suppose one of the best ways to describe it is, you know, I mean since the inception of the organization on Garde de Chia Cana, the birth of the state, freedom from British rule, if you like, the whole situation with Garde de Chia Cana was that you had an ethnic majority policing and ethnic it was Irish people policing other Irish people basically. Now there were massive social changes, you would have had major gender issues, obviously you would have had class issues, you would have all these kind of things. I don't deny there's massive social shifts between the early 1920s and you know the two ezzles, of course there were but a cornerstone of Irish policing for the best part of it is that of about nine decades, my max isn't brilliant. We do have Irish people in a fairly monochrome monoculture, fairly homogenous compared to today situation and local knowledge and relationships with local communities, very strong knowledge about individuals, their families, their neighborhoods, the locality, very high level of intelligence there on people that they were policing, whereas a big finding was that with inward migration and new populations a lot of Garde were lost and I mean that would be the same you could say for you know newly recruited Garde at any point in history of the organization where they would come into a situation where they're not expected to fleece people they don't know but I think a major difference there is that older Garde's more experienced Garde's senior Garde have a blueprint already a socio cognitive map already in place that they can pass on to new Garde whereas if you're talking about the situation with policing racialized minorities and new communities they didn't they just didn't have that they were very much often at a loss as to know how to police and how to communicate very basic fundamental things that perhaps today's Garde take completely for granted but at the time as I said about a decade ago this was extremely new and it really did rock the Garde habitus the Garde mindset understanding of what their role is and how to interact with people and so there was this kind of a more than what we really don't know what's going on and this is so in such contrast to how we've traditionally gone about placing but this is a serious problem how do we reconnect to reestablish the same kind of relationship with these newer populations that we've enjoyed with older populations and so if you're a police officer in that scenario what do you do how do you come to terms with this new invite? environment, this new ecosystem and the lack of knowledge about these new people in your field of practice. So a huge process of having to adapt to difference and diversity was also observed and you would have different guards during interviews or out on patrol at different stages of that journey of going from completely out of their depth and not knowing what to do to starting to have some kind of more familiarity with different populations. You know, starting to become more familiar with body language, a total voice even, customs, cultural norms and the differences with the Irish population may be much more used to that they, a lot of the guards that I spent time with, you know, they didn't go to school with anyone but looked different to them. They didn't have family members that looked different to them or were born in another country. You know, how much they traveled outside of Ireland could be very quite limited in a lot of situations. Their exposure to other cultures and other ethnicities was really on the job and that was a huge learning curve for a lot of Irish police officers. So how they adapted to difference forms a huge part of the research that I did and we would have people at kind of a later stage where they'd gone from not knowing who they were placing to starting to get more familiar with who they're placing to now saying, oh no, now I know things about these people. Now I know what they're like. I find it easier to interact with them. Now a lot of that knowledge would come from generalizations, would come from stereotypes, would come from stories they would have been told by other guards and a lot of police subculture does revolve around safety which I suppose is understand or give them a lot of the situations they find themselves in. So safety and danger are big themes and the stories they'll tell each other and how to manage or deal with someone in this certain type of scenario becomes a blueprint, a model for how you should deal with someone if you ever are in this situation so that you stay safe, so that you and your colleagues stay safe and so there's a positive outcome, whatever way you wanted to define that positive outcome. So that's where you would have a lot of discursive constructions, disc courts about different nationalities. There's sameness where there are difference to Irish people. So Irish people being a benchmark. As kind of they were kind of coordinates on this sociocognitive map that they would have and they would share with colleagues, pass on to each other, pass on to junior colleagues, support back to more senior colleagues about how the scenarios went down depending on the situation. So yeah, huge amount of producing, circulating and then putting into practice these kind of labels and categories which nationalities for example are more prone to attacking you, which nationalities are more different to authority. Those kind of things came up a lot. So any deviation from the norm, i.e. white settled Irish behavior, was perceived in terms of safety or danger. Sam talked to me about how the initial interaction with the police. People are subject to the attitudes test to see how they respond, which can then shape the police response. A lot of unconscious cognitive processes are going on during that attitude test. And if you are not familiar with people from different nationalities or what their experience is with police in their country of origin is how this was raised to me a lot. Then the signals can be completely opposite. I think a really, like an example that would have come up quite a lot is how in Ireland, if you approach someone as you ask them how are they what's going on, how is things, they become defensive, if they don't make eye contact, if they start to get very animated. These are all signs that may be taken as there's something wrong here and we need to find out more is this person you're reacting. This is starting to get suspicious. Whereas those are the exact things that other cultures, people from other countries and cultures do to profess their innocence, to show it's kind of a theatrical performance to a police officer that you have done absolutely nothing wrong. And that you're not acting suspicious. So on that really basic fundamental level, the signals are all out of whack if I can kind of phrase them that way. Now whether guards are correct or not, that's just everything. This is just what I would be told a lot when I was doing interviews or when I'm observing interactions and later than quizzing guards about what happened in that situation or what did you think was going on there or they would give that kind of a response and would be quite typical. Some talked of the stereotypes and biases he witnessed and how these were very much based at a community level. You have a sense that a certain nationality or a certain group within a nationality, a certain group are prone to fraud or violence or domestic violence or public order offenses or theft or petting crimes or and then through your interactions that has a kind of feeds into your practices, those practices feed back into your experiences and there's this kind of a negative spiral that can kind of unfold. Now the other thing of course is that a lot of the guards I spoke to would and also come across members of various racialized minorities as victims of crime and that would give them a whole other dimension to their experience. And so there would be a lot of their interviews and the discussions I had with the research participants with the guards were contradictory and complex. What as you mentioned before, I mean, please subculture does have dominant tendencies and the dominant narratives, the discursive devices, the constructions that they would come up with to help them make sense of these new and intense experiences with people from racialized minority communities would have overtones of kind of culturalist, essentialist, stereotypical kind of generalizations for sure. Were they open to changing their mind on things? Not often enough, but it would really depend on the level and the extent of their interaction and exposure to folks from various communities outside of placing. Do they are they in a football team with people from other countries or originally from other countries? Do they have a family member? Do they have friends outside of your garden? That would give them a completely different then complexion on their experience. So the book and the research done 10 years ago really provides a snapshot of just how dislocated the guards were at the time and may still be in a lot of ways. Their openness to reflections that took them beyond essentialist biases were not shaped by the organisation and its efforts in the space but by personal experiences. It's kind of sad in a way because the newness of so many forms of diversity in Ireland meant that a lot of those biases were not ingrained or structurally absorbed and you do start to think about how we had an opportunity to do things differently. Dr James Carr of the University of Limrich discussed with me his work on the experiences of members of the Muslim community. When I was doing research in the past, I remember I actually, I was head on my own research, I remember recently in off hearing of a young Muslim woman coming down I think from North and Ireland to the republic and she, the boss was stopped or whatever is trained when she was on the start and the only person who was given attention to by the guards was the black Muslim woman on the bus. So I work as a side focus on Muslim communities but I remember speaking to a member, a retired member of the guardie and he told me these experiences with the travel community. And this point I later I learned about sort of culture and being socialised into a particular culture. I'm not saying that there is a culture of racism within the character, right? Not a lot. But we can't I think every organisation has a culture so we have to bear this in mind as well. This retired guardie told me that when Fisari Pali was doing his training as a cadet. He was in a car with two garada officers. They went to a haunting site. It was something like, I don't know, 3am in the morning or something like this. There was nothing happening at the haunting site. Everyone was asleep. And the garady went in there and turned on the lights and turned on the sirens and just kind of wore people up. And this young cadet in the back, set to the two guys in front. This hard to tell whoever I don't know who they were. I said, why are you doing this? And so just to let them know that we're there. Just to let them know that we're there. There was no reason for this. There was no activity. He wasn't going on. And a very antagonistic relationship. There was something to it. Why are they just letting all the travelers know that they're there? I was struck then. I'd say maybe, oh, I don't know, a couple of years afterwards. I'm hearing an example almost exactly, almost exactly like that. But from completely the other end of the country. Where again, the guards had gone into the haunting site at a particular time and had made some sort of noise, let them know that the presence of them were there. And again, there was nothing happening. There was no crime or something. I had a particular time happening. So when you ask the question at the outset, in terms of is there racism within the garady, number one, my first thing is about the experiences of the travel community, start at the end of this country and how their engagements with on garady shia kana have been. There were many even more recent reports of the treatments of, and we've seen them on social media, about the treatment of members of the travel community by members of on garady shia kana. Or at least, should I say, at the alleged treatment of members of the travel community. Within my own work, I give you three examples of racism experienced by Muslim communities here in Ireland in engaging with members of on garady shia kana. And when I say, like I see I present these two as racism, the other person is one of the guys and one of the garady said to one of the Muslim men, I'm just doing my job. That's that's that's that's that was his perspective. But why it's again, it's the idea of the identity that's key here. Okay, so for the first case, I remember speaking to like from one of the the urban areas in Ireland, the Muslim guy is in the car, he's on his phone, his wife is in the car with him, gardisee him, I don't know if she's on a bike or whatever, but she sees him on this. He's hands off, he knows his car, right? He's he's he's he's not contesting this so she she the the gardisee speaking with him. She starts asking questions about who his partner is in the car, all this sort of thing, what's he doing here, where is he from, all this sort of thing. And his response is look, I've quite why you're asking me these questions, you even know I've I shouldn't be using my phone, it's grand, but what are what are the questions about my wife got to do with anything that you're that you know, that you stopped me for. I think she there was a threat of some sort, I can't exactly recall what the threat was to the who seemed like your car will be impounded or something overnight. When he asked for her identity, she didn't she didn't pursue it, stopped it, it went, it finished and that particular incident. Another incident, a different city in the country, okay, I'm not going to name the city syrup, but they're these that want to speak into your ear opening from from different parts of the country, distinctly different parts of the country. In one incident where there was there was a crime actually, a road traffic accident happened, there was a Muslim guy and his wife in the car, they called the guards guards came along and immediately the guards started asking him where he's from, what's he doing, all this sort of thing, he was the actual, he was the person who was the innocent priority in this collision, I think it was at the time. Again, he was saying, look why why you asking me this, why you know this is nothing to do with the case in point. He was deemed to be foreign, deemed to be Muslim and deemed to be foreign, and his religious dress at the time presented him as being foreign, okay, but he's actually an Irish Muslim, he's born and raised here as well, so luckily he had kind of knowledge of his rights and what he couldn't do and so on. The third case demonstrates how when we think about policing of communities, how the sort of international troops, they inform the local as well, that the local isn't kind of, that our experiences of policing here in Ireland aren't going to be that influence the foreign international. So Shannon Airport protest against the second Gulf War, a whole bunch of people there, Richard Boy Barrett, all these kind of speakers, I suppose left-leaning speakers protesting against the conflict, a lot of people come to see them, listen to them and so on, and there are some Muslim guys there as well, as I remember the pseudonym that I've given him is Ehang, I remember when Ehang told me he said, "Look, you know, when it came to time for it to eat, we ate, when it came to time to pray, we prayed, we just watched the thing, when it came to time to wrap up and go, we offered the organizers a hand to start dismantling things, you know, taking parts of the stage down or whatever it was they were using." He said, they got into the car and asked the robot to leave on the car. He looks into the rear view mirror and behind them there are two guys stuck in the car. So he can't reverse the car, obviously, the two guards behind him and then there are two guards that I decide the car. So the guys start asking questions and they start asking questions about where you from, what are you doing here, what do you think of Saudi Arabia, what do you think of Hezbollah and so on. And the guys are like, "Oh, why did you single us out?" And I'm just doing my job with the answers etc. You're on to so why were these guys all that crowd of folks there picked out? Why was the Muslim girl coming down on the train or bus or whatever it was, singled out? Why was the guy who had stopped and reported a road traffic accident, presumed I guess her to guilty that he was at fault, you know, because he's Muslim, he looks Muslim, he must therefore be foreign, that he doesn't know how to drive in a road, started by a deer, right. So where are all these folks singled out? They're singled out because they're members of particular groups and how their identities are presented to us. Why are members of the travel community? Why have they had different different experiences with the guards than somebody from the settled community? Because there are deemed to be part of, you know, all travelers or members of this, you know, they're all part of this community that has all these alleged kind of pocklybodies to whatever it might be. So we have experiences of racism from members of the charity within the country. The evidence is there and has been gathered over time. I've gathered some of that evidence myself and property orders as well. And he discussed how the stereotyping of groups plays out. You know, when we think about the other crimes associated with a particular identity, you know, we think it's a category with a racialist community, we think about it if it's associated with blackness, for example, if it's associated with Muslimness, just to keep these distinct for a couple of seconds, you end up in a sort of, are you on the risk of this sort of circular proof idea going on? You know that, okay, ex-community are associated with a particular form of crime or criminality. Therefore, as a police officer, I am going to police this community differently. Either subconsciously or else by order, I'm going to focus my energies towards this community. And then that obviously you've higher rates of policing, you have over-policing of a community. And then obviously you're going to because criminality is within every community, right? You find criminality within this community that's being absolutely in the cross areas of policing. And then that stands to sort of justify the policing measures that we've done. The eye report system is a self-reporting mechanism for recording racist incidents in Ireland. So people who've experienced racism can make a report via the eye report website. Dr. Lucy Michael, the sociologist who analyzes the data in conjunction with the Irish network against racism, talked to me about what they have found. So the eye report.ie system was set up in 2013 to allow the public to report incidents of racism. They could be headcrimes, it could be hate speech or incitement to hatred. It could be criminal damage like racist graffiti, or it could be discrimination in public services, in employment, in health, in schools, etc. So it really allows people to report the very widest range of discrimination. We've been collecting that data and analysing it for eight years now. And the numbers of reports have been growing as it becomes better known, but also reports go up when there are particular incidents that are well known in communities or high profile. There are some types of incidents that are more reported than others. It's very difficult, for example, to know if you've been discriminated against in the workplace unless it's directly used against you with racist language. It's difficult to know if a landlord has refused you housing unless they've told you on the phone somewhere's available and when you turn up and they see your skin color or you turn up with a different name that they refuse you. So a lot of a lot of incidents is actually difficult to know. So people can only suspect that something's happened. So you do tend to get more reports about things where there's been explicit use of racial slurs racist language. But you also get cases where people feel that really couldn't be anything else except racism. What struck me over the eight years is how conservative people are. They don't take a wild guess and say, they might have been racism. They only come to report to our report if they're fairly certain that it was racism. And I think that's evident in the impact that the cases have on people. We ask about the impact on people. And very often it's quite extreme psychological impact of these events, drives them to report it to us and to others. There's two things really that come up in relation to Angachecona. One is about how the Guardian deal with incidents of hate crime that are reported to them. And we reported extensively on that in the submission to the Commission on the Future of Policing where we noted that there was a very wide range of failures from failure to record reported crimes, failure to attend the scene, failure to collect evidence, failure to protect the victim, failure to meet many of the aspects of the victim's directive. And indeed, even sometimes to bring the perpetrator to the victim's house. So really quite extensive and quite frightening failures. And those things were putting others off reporting to Guardi. The second thing, of course, then, is direct discrimination by Angachecona against ethnic minorities and migrants. And that could include, for example, Guardi stopping people on the street for no particular reason. It could involve racist abuse or insinuations in Guardi stations when someone attended for immigration purposes or to report a crime or something else. And very often, people reporting that they had had multiple experiences with the Guardi that were problematic. So people weren't necessarily reporting the first thing that happened. But when it happened to them again, or if it had happened to someone they knew, and then to them, they were more likely to report it to eye report. Both are worrying for me whether it's failures in terms of how Guardi responds to reports of hate crime and harassment, or whether it's direct discrimination by Angachecona both drive down trust in the Guardi in policing, both isolate families and communities both create an atmosphere of fear that people feel unprotected. There are extremes we see, too, in the eye report data where the Guardi have engaged in what's kind of known as stop and search, where they're stopping and questioning people on the street, even engaging in physical body searches on the street, bringing people to Guardi stations with incidents that sound awfully like assault on the way and in Guardi stations, refusing solicitors in Guardi stations to people. And the use of questions, the issuing of paperwork that's incorrect or not filled out properly, these kinds of incidents are there. So while they're not extremely common in the data, they are things that we've heard much more in migrant communities and ethnic minority communities. So the data is very much reflecting a wider pattern, even if the numbers are small in eye report. And they really fit together a community that feels that it's experiencing racial profiling is less likely to report racial harassment and hate crimes to Guardi as well. And that's why I say the two things are very interlinked. I wouldn't ever really separate them. Both of them indicate that the Guardi are not serving a very significant proportion of the population and that they're not serving the communities that they live in, that justice is partial and access to justice is not equal for everybody. And that's really what worries me when I see reports about on Guardi Shakona in eye report. Ethnic minority and migrant communities very often share information amongst themselves because it's how they navigate the system, if they're migrants, because it's how they learn who can be trusted. And it's particularly if you're someone who experiences racism, how you protect yourself from that. So parents are used to sharing information about what schools or sports clubs are safe for their children. They're used to sharing information about what areas are safe to travel in and to work in and to be with their families in. So we get that kind of information moving all the time about where is safe and where is not safe. We know that for example, the Guardi stop black drivers in ways that are very reminiscent of the kind of driving while black phenomenon that we've seen elsewhere in Europe. And I guess I would look a lot to Europe for comparisons rather than the US because it's very easy to take an idea from the US and apply it because the English language jurisdiction, but actually our policing and our laws is a little different. And so I would be inclined to look towards European patterns for much of that and really that kind of driving while black phenomenon is very reminiscent of the European experience where it's assumed that immigrants can't afford a nice car and therefore it must be stolen. It's assumed that people who are ethnic minority or not white might be guilty of immigration offenses. And so these kinds of things are put on them. We've had examples just to demonstrate that kind of link between how police address immigration and how they address other things. We've had victims of hate crime report racist harassment to Gardee who then get visited by Gardee who ask them questions about their immigration status and the immigration status of their families and friends. To the point where even if their own immigration status is secure, they start to worry about bringing the attention on other people whose their status they're not so sure of. Right at the moment, the only guarantee that you have is that while a case is being investigated, not where you're perpetrator or suspect, perpetrator, but where you're actually the victim, your immigration status will not be investigated for the length of the investigation. So if I'm an immigrant and I report a crime against me, my immigration status won't be investigated for the length of the investigation, but it can be as soon as that investigation is finished. So if the Gardee find that they can't pursue a prosecution and based on a hate crime against me, they can still turn around and investigate my immigration status at the end of that investigation. So why would I go to Gardee if they're going to use the information I gave them to investigate my immigration status and that of my family? Right now the Gardee have carte blanche to use a person's information to look and see what their immigration status is. That means that anybody who's worried about their immigration status renew of visa, potential deportation, perhaps undocumented, and it might not be them, it might be someone in their family, they would worry about going to the Gardee at all in case that kind of investigation was prompted. So we've a lot of work to do in building trust to ethnic minorities and migrant communities in Ireland and with Gardee, the more extreme examples. Of course, people learn about them very quickly. So we do have a long way to go. Lucy also explains how the data exposes myths that exist within policing to minimize the concerns. I want to go back a few years because in response to I report data, the Gardee press office said many times that it wasn't people didn't trust on Gardee, Shea Cona, it was that they didn't trust police in their country of origin and that affected their trust in on Gardee, Shea Cona. And for the first five years that I was doing, I report analysis, the Gardee press office gave us that line that it isn't that they don't trust Gardee. And we kept saying, look, this is what's happening. In year three of I report, we actually changed the questionnaire and we said, if you didn't report to police, if you didn't report to Gardee, why was it? And we gave 10 options and only one of them was, I didn't trust police in my home country. Others were, I didn't have time, it didn't seem worth the effort. I was afraid of the perpetrator finding out, a whole range of other reasons. And in the six or seven years, we've asked that question. Very, very few, maybe only one or two people have responded that they didn't trust Gardee because of policing in their own country. The most frequent response was, I didn't trust Gardee because of a recent or a previous encounter with Gardee. So it's not police in other countries that's driving distrust. It's encounters with our police service here in this country that is driving distrust in the same police service. And that to me is worrying. If on Gardee's corner don't take seriously that it is their own actions, their own practice that's driving down trust, that will continue to happen and become cumulative. And there will be entire communities that just don't trust and don't access the police service. And therefore reduce their access to justice overall. I asked Lucy, whether the I report data supported the I own in conclusion of institutional racism. I think the I report data has supported that conclusion from the start. I think you only have to look at our submission to the Commission on the Future of Policing to see how much that is the case. For the last four years I've been looking for examples of good practice in on Gardee's Sheikhona that's reflected in the cases. To respond to the question that we only ever criticized the police. And what I'm really interested in is driving better performance than on Gardee's Sheikhona. So I'm interested in good practice. And I have to say to you, the good practice is very often down to individuals. It's down to people who voluntarily go and take training outside of the service. It's people who take an interest in the communities that they're serving. And very often they are loan voices in the station where they're working. And that's very worrying to me that if Gardy do not feel that they get the backup of the organization, then they're reading something in it too that we're seeing from the outside. And that is that the policies and practices themselves are not neutral. If it takes an individual to go above and beyond for an equal service, then the service itself is not an equal service. It should be that every Garda by default is able to provide that equal service to include ethnic minority and migrant communities. And if it's not by default, then it's institutional racism. The policies and practices have not been built to include those communities. The Greedo Office was established around 2000, 2001. So we've had 20 years now of a very small, under-resourced part of Angardeshiakona trying to adapt the whole service to the needs of a growing and very well-established community now of communities of ethnic minority and migrant people. And it's not been fit for purpose for a long time, despite the excellent efforts of people within that at various stages. That office has been the only one that has been really seriously engaged with external training at the European level. And they have never had the power to intervene in a hate crime investigation. They have to wait to be invited by the investigating guard. And that to me is a policy and a practice that is institutionally racist. If you will not allow those with expertise in the area to intervene and to ensure that investigations are of an appropriate standard, that they meet the adequate standards to provide an equal service, then that's institutional racism. Institutional racism is not about direct discrimination. It's about whether your policies and practices are fit for purpose to provide an equal service. It's about whether there are unequal outcomes at the end of the day. And we are seeing very unequal outcomes. So yes, I absolutely think that the data supports the un-in-ordered institutional racism. A number of international bodies, including Cedaw and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, have been critical of the lack of policies and structures in place in Ireland for recording hate crime, for addressing the needs of women from diverse communities, and even the fact that discrimination does not constitute a breach of guard discipline. Third, reporting in 2019, noted that only 86 members of minority ethnic communities are in on Guard of Shia Kona, including one member from the Traveller community and no members from the Roma community. Applications from people from minority ethnic communities to join are down to 2.3%, compared with almost 15% nine years ago. Indeed, it took one individual 12 years of challenging to get on Guard of Shia Kona to remove its ban on the wearing of the turban as part of the uniform. All of these policies issues go to the core of the finding of institutional racism, seeing even today in the incorrect claim that ethnicity data cannot be gathered because of GDPR. The diversity of ways in which this institutional racism can infect views of guard of powers is perhaps evident when the ombudsman for children concluded that ethnic profiling was an issue in the cases where blonde Roma children were removed from their families. This inquiry led to the National Roma needs assessment, which found that 53% of Roma respondents reforted feeling discriminated against by a guard of Shia Kona are in the courts. A further 78% of respondents reported that they had been stopped at least once by a guard of Shia Kona for identification, and of those, 56% reported being stopped four or more times. In 2017, special rapporteur on child protection completed a report in which he noted that when Guardi were asked to buy cultural competence and diversity training, only one member interviewed remembered receiving such training. When Guardi did talk to Dr. Shia Kona about their dealings with foreign national children, and I quote, "The language used by those members lacked sensitivity and suggested an absence of critically sophisticated understanding of the complex needs of an increasingly cultural and ethnically diverse population." Pavi Point, in its submission to the Commission for the Future of Policing in 2018, stated that travelers are often overpolished in relation to certain situations and crimes and underprotected in other situations where a guard Shia Kona fails to respond to calls for help. As a result, crimes such as hate crime and domestic violence and sexual violence often go unreported by travelers in Roma. In 2020, a study conducted by Inspector Dave McNeerney, one of the leading figures in diversity work within on Guardi Shia Kona was published. It was based on interviews conducted with over 180 Guardi between 2012 and 2014. Ten percent of frontline officer surveyed said they had a poor view of travelers before joining the forest, but that this had increased to 20 percent when asked by their views now. Not one of the Guardi interviewed expressed a good or very good view of travelers, either before joining or now. 70 percent of Guardi interaction with the community was to arrest one of its members, compared to 20 percent of instances where travelers were the victim of a crime. 40 percent of frontline guardi said they frequently heard disparaging remarks by travelers. 26 percent heard such remarks about Roma community and 21 percent about the Black community. What makes this all the more worrying is that the vast majority of those interviewed were ethnically as an officer and less than a third of them would intervene and challenge such remarks. Of course for many, the moment so embedded in minds is the killing in December 2020 of Georgian Kenchow by Guardi at Saide's home. In the wake of this, Yari, Yutza Gans racism and inequality conducted a survey of experiences of policing and Harita Viyari spoke to me about this work. Their survey conducted between February and April of this year was completed by over 160 people. So in terms of the Guardi, we found that compared only 19 percent of white settled people, 35 percent of people of color and travelers had been randomly stopped and searched by the guards with no prior reason. And all of the people, all of the people of color and travelers who had been, 35 percent said that it had happened at least three times. So you can see some level of repeated discrimination there and specifically from the people who had said that they were from a Black African background, 85 percent of those who were randomly stopped and searched by the guards felt that they had been racially profiled. And I think it's very important to state here that it's not a crime to be young black and to have a car, to have a nice car that you've worked for. It's not a crime to be young black and have a group of friends that doesn't make it into a gang and it's clear from the survey that we did in general, also some account of people describing their experiences that young black people are especially very likely to be followed around in shops, assumed to be criminals by the likes of the Guardi but also security guards as well. And everyone and only 7 percent, so that's 93 percent of people who hadn't randomly stopped and searched by the Guardi felt unsatisfied or dissatisfied after their encounter. Only 7 percent of people reported feeling satisfied after their encounter and 45 percent felt humiliated, which just really shows the lack of respect that these young people are being treated with. And I think it's very significant as well, especially significant that 40 percent of those who were randomly stopped and searched by the guards felt it's angry after their encounter. And that shows the impact that this repeated discrimination has not only on young people of color but also their communities generally. Young people are feeling humiliated by their encounters with the police, not just upset, not just angry, but humiliated. So there was one person who was age 16, this was someone from a young black background who had been choked by the guards. Like as they had violently restrained him, there was someone else from a Pakistani background to a being called a terrorist. We also had a couple of accounts of people from young men's airmen as well. We said that the guards had thrown around the K-word at them and similar, this very much relates to similar experiences of some young Asian women who experienced exotification and sexualization from the hands of the police generally as well. I think that anti-Asian racism has even heightened even more over the past year, right? For Hareda, this is an intersectional issue, deeply connected to issues of class and the nature of the state. And if you think about the crises in housing and health care that are very often blamed on immigrant communities and people of color, the more that immigrants and people of color and generally anyone from a minority background is blamed and scapegoated for crises that capitalism and the state have created the more, you know, the guards as well are able to give into the stereotype of certain communities that help foster even more division but also prevent all young people from working class backgrounds that are out like that experience, prejudice from the Guaradi like very recently we found that like the majority of fines given to young people in Dublin have been given out to young people in Blanchett's down and Ballymon shows just how anti working class the guards are and this is only furthered in how they refuse to properly assist delivery workers after they face crimes on the street or their bikes being sold or how they manhandle the brave deputants workers rather than supporting them in their struggle over the past year. It's clear that they have anti working class attitudes seeped amongst the Guaradi which is like which is completely unsurprising to like us at youth against racism and inequality because we understand that the Guaradi have to like uphold a system that is that that you know puts that pits the working class and below all others and you know gives the barest concessions possible right and I think these like the racist division that's helped that that's propped up by the Guaradi prevents all working class people from coming together you know to challenge how all young people are treated by the Guaradi to challenge you know the increase in like emergency powers that's recently been given to challenge the crisis in housing and healthcare and the Guaradi to be very important role to play in you know propping up this division. There is sufficient evidence that racism is an issue in Irish policing both in the behaviors of individual members but also in the structures and policies of the organization. This evidence as demonstrated in this episode comes from both Guaradi themselves and the communities they police. It has been gathered over two decades and through a host of diverse methods surveys interviews focus groups and ethnographies the consistency of the data irrespective of the source or the method is conclusive naming this racism does not create division. It supports and legitimizes the experiences of those who've been at the receiving end of it. The failure of the organization to address this by proactively seeking to find out as much as a can about racism in Irish policing isn't itself racist. All of the global research tells us that racism is inherently an issue in policing not only is it a byproduct of the other traits of police culture such as conservativeism and suspicion but it is such an issue that in the most authoritative study of police culture by Robert Reiner it is deemed to be a trait of police culture in and of itself. The argument that this is because they reflect the views of society they are from is it'll found it racism is found to be higher among police than it is among general population but societal racism is important in that often because of social structures ethnic minorities and open the areas and groups who are more policed which in turn enables and feeds generalizations and suspicions about those groups. This episode does not address what the guards have done to combat this nor does it suggest what else needs to be done. I purposely and solely wanted to address the basic question of is there a problem of racism within the Irish police because we need to get to grips with this before we can challenge it. It's time to stop debating whether racism is an issue in Irish policing. It's time for the state and the police to do the work to understand the full extent of it to legitimize the experience of those who have been subject to that. We need to stop with any bad apples thesis that is just some guardian and acknowledge the organizational basis of this problem. We need to stop countering these arguments with the majority of guardian you do a good job. It's not anti-policed point of problems within the police. It is in fact anti-police not to address shortcomings in policing. If we have communities who do not trust the police, who feel angry or even humiliated, then this inhibits the police from doing their job. The police need the trust of communities to do their work and it puts police at risk to have this sentiment growing. I'm very grateful to all the experts who have contributed to this episode and Tony and Brian for producing it. My hope is that bringing all of this research together in one episode will help people understand the scale of the issue or if you already understood that to maybe give you the tool of evidence for the conversations you're having. This is a known problem in Ireland and we have reliable data stretching back two decades. We need to know more but we already know. [BLANK_AUDIO]