waider

Overheard on the DART: male garda stops a young, female learner driver as she is driving unaccompanied on a motorway while texting someone on her mobile phone. Says something like "I suppose you were texting the boyfriend". She says she doesn't have one, or words to that effect, and so the garda asks for her number and lets her off with a warning. The story was related by the female in question to a male friend of hers, so it's not exactly third- or fourth- hand.

For those not familiar with Irish law, learner drivers on their first (learner) license are required to have a fully-licensed driver accompanying them; they're not allowed drive on motorways; and anyone using a mobile phone without a hands-free kit is liable to get points on their license (12 points over 42 months and you lose your license) and (I think) an on-the-spot fine.

I love tolyn's stuff. It's just so matter-of-fact, he's not gaming for the punchline or anything, just telling good stories. Anyway. The latest, which if it was in a book would be titled Don't Piss Off The Dispatcher reminds me of a personal experience some years back: as I walked into town, a car pulled up at the kerb a short distance away from me, a guy jumped out, grabbed a handbag off a girl on the pavement, leapt back in the car and off they went. I stood out on the road to get the car's license plate and then went to see if the girl was okay. Then I called 112 (GSM emergency number).

First fault: no location service. I had to tell the emergency call handler that I was in Dublin. Not, you know, where in Dublin; just that I was in Dublin. Right now we've got location-based services on WAP, but even a few years ago I would've imagined that the mobile telcos could at the very least feed crude location information back to the emergency centre for, say, people who don't know where the hell they are. Apparently not. Nice one, kids.

Second fault: The emergency call handler passed me to central Garda dispatch for Dublin, which I think is Pearse Street station. Dispatch asked me what the situation was. I realised I didn't know the name of the quay I was standing on, but I knew some immediate landmarks and one or two nearby street names. So I described my location approximately like this:

On the quays. In front of the old corporation building. Next to Parliament Bridge. Just down the quay from Parliament Street, in fact. Between Parliament Bridge and the Ha'penny Bridge.

Now, that's sufficient information for someone with a tourist map to locate the few-hundred-metre stretch of quay I'm standing on. I waited for the Gardaí to show up. Eventually a squad car emerged from the alley just behind me, and I flagged it down. And very quickly established that they'd spent five or ten minutes driving around looking for me, because the dispatcher had told 'em that I was on Parliament Street. Thanks, hon. I'll bear your communication skills in mind if I ever need to call the Gardaí again.

Apparently the Garda Representative Association feel it's not the duty of the Gardaí to uphold public order:

"It seems now gardaí will have to police the public-order side of the smoking ban. It will alienate the police force. I think it's very unfair that members of the gardaí should have to police a smoking ban when it becomes a public-order issue," he said. "We are almost like the sweeper-uppers of somebody else's problems. We will be the laughing stock of the world on this," Mr Stone added. (from The Irish Times, link may or may not work due to registration and what not)

Now, from the Garda Síochána website, there are plenty references to upholding public order, including a press release on an agreement with Russia back in 2000 which explicitly claims responsibility for maintenance of public order. Never mind that the name of the force, "An Garda Síochána" translates as "Guardians of the Peace".