Promises of garda pursuit training undercut by question of training instructors first

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GARDAÍ WILL NOT be able to start new training in pursuit tactics by the end of the year despite what the Minister for Justice has said, because instructors have yet to be trained, sources have told The Journal.

Jim O’Callaghan said Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly confirmed to him that the pursuit training will begin for the first time this year.

It comes after the Garda Representative Association called for “proper training” following the incident at the weekend. The Journal has written extensively on the topic and revealed earlier this year that no garda in the country was trained in the skill, which is a standard training tactic in other jurisdictions.

Earlier this year, Justin Kelly told an Oireachtas Committee that An Garda Síochána was not in a position to provide such training as resources were tied up with policing the EU Presidency, which is being held in Ireland from July to December this year.

On Tuesday morning Kevin Bolger of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) criticised the lack of a rollout.

“We were given assurances, but here we are in the midst of another tragedy where the promises are still coming. We’re not seeing any tangible actions,” he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.

The Journal contacted multiple sources across the force who poured cold water on the idea of beginning training by the end of the year.

A key issue is that the EU Presidency, which will begin again in earnest in September, is sucking resources away from frontline policing. There is also a Donald Trump visit in September.

But the critical problem with all this, multiple sources have said, is that the instructors in An Garda Síochána who will train the drivers in the highly complex methods must be trained first. It is understood that may happen by the year’s end, but that will mean only a handful of time to train operational gardaí before January.

While the pursuit policy was being prepared by An Garda Síochána, officers engaged with foreign forces to determine how to handle pursuits.

It is understood that gardaí went abroad to examine this and discussed with those forces how best to deal with the problem.

There has been particular contact, it is believed, between the PSNI and British police forces.

They have discussed with gardaí about methods such as TPAC or Tactical Pursuit and Containment. This is a very complex and detailed set of measures used by British police to bring a pursuit safely to an end.

Sources have said that the most complex move is to box in fleeing cars and bring them to a stop. This process involving up to eight cars uses a series of bumping manoeuvres at high speed and the box will slowly bring the pursuit to a stop by trapping and intimidating the motorist to a halt.

One of the difficulties in using that in Ireland is that it can only be applied on roads like motorways and there would not be enough gardaí routinely available to achieve it.

Other tactics have been considered, such as a system which uses a small number of garda cars combining together to provoke a car into driving into a trap set by some of the police vehicles, which would work best on Irish back roads.

Sources have asked us not to say the specific detail in this method, but it would require very organised communications between the units.

The sources have said that hard stops, or gardaí ramming stolen cars, will not be introduced into Ireland. This is for a number of reasons, the cost, the danger and also the fact that there is no appetite among authorities to introduce these tactics.

The hard contact drills have been used in other jurisdictions such as the Met Police and in the US to bring pursuits to a stop, but it is high risk.

Police forces in the US have taken it to the extreme with a method known as Precision Imobilisation Technique. This sees a patrol car touching the rear bumper in a manner than can spin a car.

The Journal has learned that the Emergency Response Unit has used so-called hard stops while arresting people carrying guns, but this was a skill developed within that unit only. Members of the Armed Support Unit have received some training in how to use three cars to box in vehicles when they are dealing with a so-called “non-compliant motorist”.

Gardaí have also got access to stinger devices which puncture tyres safely but yet they have not been trained to pursue. At best they can only follow a car.

The sources have said that the priority to dealing with the stolen cars is to stop them before they get to the motorway off ramps and drive the wrong way. That will require urgent action, but the issue for gardaí is that on average pursuits last just close to four minutes.

Regardless gardaí will have to be trained if the State is committed to giving them the capability.

The training for gardaí is under the guidance of the Road Safety Authority (RSA) and its Emergency Services Driver Standards (ESDS) curriculum.

The training of gardaí is defined by Competency Based Driving (CBD) One, Two and Three.

CBD One is a short driving test, last about an hour, to permit them to drive patrol cars without lights and sirens, CDB Two allows them to respond to calls on lights and sirens.

At present the CBD Two course is two weeks – sources have said that the pursuit training could be attached to that for an extra week’s training. The problem arises that the CBD Two drivers will have to be trained for a week, but the CBD One drivers will have to go through the three-week course.

Sources have said there is a high failure rate on the CBD Two course as it stands and the complexity of pursuit training is likely to increase that problem.

One senior source said there will have to be a choice made of gardaí from particular locations and units to quicken the pace of the training roll out.

In other words areas where stolen cars are most numerous and units like the Armed Support Unit, Emergency Response Unit and Roads Policing Units are likely to get it.

“It is not feasible that all operational gardaí will get this training, that is just not achievable. It doesn’t take anyone with half a brain to realise this,” said one frustrated senior source.

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