Opinion: a project in west Dublin has brought young black adults and gardaí together to create meaningful dialogue between police and community
Ireland has rapidly become more ethnically diverse in recent years. Yet our public services have often failed to keep pace with demographic changes, lacking the diversity and intercultural competencies to meet the needs and gain the trust of all sections of society.
This problem is particulary acute in a policing context. Tensions between police organisations and minority ethnic communities exist globally. Decades of research shows that minority communities both experience and perceive over-policing and under-protection, with the police too often seen as an invading, rather than protective, force.
Institutional racism – whereby a public body is less likely to meet your needs because of your ethnicity – does not require that police express, or even hold, racist beliefs. It means that civilians, on aggregate, experience policing differently because of their ethnicity. Ireland lacks the data to calculate the extent of discrimination as precisely as elsewhere. But as research summarised on the late Dr. Vicky Conway's podcast suggests, this is as likely to be an issue here as it is in comparable nations.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today With Claire Byrne, interview with Bob Collins, chairperson of the Policing Authority
Enduring structures vs existing solutions
The fundamental causes of this problem are structural and exist across society and public services as a whole. However, the police have unique functions and legal status. Their powers to use force and their role as gatekeepers to criminal justice mean that mistrust and discrimination are seriously harmful.
Many countries and police forces in Europe now take some measures to prevent police discrimination, with varying levels of success. This has included training programmes, new forms of accountability and community engagement. Yet, these efforts often lack the trust of communities, and the resources and organisational buy-in, to address power imbalances and cultural assumptions or sustain changes. They also seldom engage meaningfully with the intended beneficiaries – minority ethnic communities.
An Garda Síochána has also received criticism for inadequate levels of investment in engagement with minority ethnic communities. There is no obvious evidence, for example, that the main top-down structures for local policing governance – Joint Policing Committees and Local Policing Forums – consistently attend to matters of diversity. In 2019, Conway wrote that Joint Policing Committees are 'bureaucratic and exclusionary’ and lack ‘a spirit of collaboration’.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, Barry Lenihan on the fallout in West Dublin since the killing of George Nkencho in December 2020
The central structures for engaging with minority ethnic communities are the Garda National Diversity and Integration Unit and Diversity Officers (previously Ethnic Liaison Officers). They, too, have reportedly been found wanting in terms of resources and training. Gains can also be lost as individuals move. In Blanchardstown, for example, the engagement of Ethnic Liaison Officers in sport built trust with young black people. But relationships weakened as they were transferred, taking local and cultural knowledge with them. More recently, George Nkencho's shooting and incidents between gardaí and his family, led to anger, protests and concerns that trust in Dublin West will deteriorate further.
Meaningful police-community dialogue is needed
At the highest levels, An Garda Síochána recognise a need to tackle this problem. A renewed focus on diversity in recruitment, including a new diversity internship, may help sensitise the force to the needs and cultures of different ethnic groups. The Policing Authority has collaborated with the Irish Research Council to fund research on the question of enhancing police-community relations, and commissioned another study to explore minority communities’ experiences of policing. One recent study on Traveller access to justice acknowledges the Garda National Diversity Forum, though it reports overwhelmingly negative findings about Travellers’ experiences of Gardaí.
If gardaí want to understand the communities they police, there is no substitute for direct, structured, independently facilitated dialogue between gardaí and community members. There are a growing number of examples of collaboration with Gardaí, community leaders, civil society bodies and universities to facilitate such dialogue.
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From RTÉ News in October 2019, a new Garda diversity and integration strategy launched
Our project website publishes case studies in which restorative circles – where participants sit in a circle and the opportunity to answer questions revolves around sequentially – were used to structure dialogue between gardaí and the Travelling community, and gardaí and Direct Provision residents. Restorative circles can help equalise power in the room and ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak and to listen. Feedback from this work was positive, with anecdotal evidence suggesting that the understanding and relationships built enabled gardaí to work with community members to resolve pressing issues and prevent conflicts escalating.
Following this, the Irish Research Council funded a project involving a dialogue process between young black adults and gardaí in Blanchardstown. We first organised restorative practices training for 11 young black adults and Gardaí. The trainees then helped design and facilitate a dialogue process that involved 12 further young black adults and gardaí. Participants shared their experiences of living and working in Blanchardstown, perspectives on stereotyping and policing and views on relationships between gardaí and the black community.
The goal is to understand each other better, not to debate, convince, or challenge anyone else’s experience. Early indications are that involving persons from both groups in project design and delivery was essential. The participating gardaí and black volunteers are trailblazers and should be commended for taking this leap into the unknown and sharing and listening to each other so respectfully over the two days.
There is no substitute for direct, structured, independently facilitated dialogue between gardaí and community members
Scale-up dialogue to find solutions collaboratively
Martin Luther King Jr. said that fear stops people from getting along, stems from not knowing each other, and dissipates when people communicate. The dialogue process was small in scale, but could be scaled up across all our communities. The 2018 Garda Cultural Audit found that community engagement was the most commonly cited source of pride among gardaí, while the 2022 Cultural Audit suggested that gardaí ranked highly in terms of prosocial motivations for their work.
Restorative circles are a practical way to create meaningful engagement that enables the gardaí to understand the diverse communities they police. With Garda and community buy-in, they could be used across Ireland.
The Blanchardstown project is called UBUNTU, referring to a relational African philosophy that roughly translates as ‘humanity’ and is expanded to the saying: ‘I am because we are’. Much more is required to build positive relationships between An Garda Síochána and minority ethnic communities in Ireland. But conversations that help us recognise our common humanity are a start.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
