GSOC records 58 complaints against local gardai
FIFTY EIGHT allegations were made against gardai in Meath last year a new report has revealed.
According to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) annual report for 2022, it received a total of 1,826 complaints of alleged garda misconduct last year, a decrease of 11 per cent on 2021.
In that year, GSOC also opened 41 investigations on referral by An Garda Síochána under Section 102 of the Garda Síochána Act 2005, following incidents involving death or serious harm. This is a 31 per cent decrease on the year before.
The year also saw 27 files forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions arising from GSOC investigations into allegations of sexual violence, assault, breaches of the Road Traffic Acts and the provision of false information.
The report sees GSOC provide enhanced detail and information about its work, with the inclusion of 20 case studies providing a snapshot of the range of ways in which complaints and referrals are received, progressed, investigated and resolved. The Report also provides an overview of the outcomes of the 20 public interest investigations closed by GSOC in 2022, as well as a summary of the systemic recommendations on policy and practice issued to An Garda Síochána in that year.
Speaking on the publication of the report, GSOC Chairperson Rory MacCabe, said:
“It is my hope that this Annual Report will afford the reader an accurate view of the important work done by GSOC and a sense of the challenges that an expanded and transformed police oversight and complaints body will face in the years to come.
"Policing oversight is hard. It is a detailed and demanding vocation, crucial to accountability in a democratic society. Holding police, possessed of considerable powers, to account deserves the highest respect. To maintain this respect requires express and unequivocal commitment to independence."
In recent months GSOC has clearly outlined concerns that the Policing, Security and Community Safety Bill does not adequately provide for the level of institutional independence that the public rightly expects of a new policing Ombudsman body.
"Such independence was as the heart of the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Policing, that were accepted and endorsed without amendment by the Government," said Mr MacCabe.
"The Bill will shortly go before the Senate and my colleagues and I intend to engage further with the upper house to underscore the importance of strengthening the institutional independence of GSOC’s successor body” he added.