Vigilantes take a back seat

South-city anti-drug movements have acquired a fearsome reputation for savage violence, but the thugs have put their balaclavas and baseball bats away. Ad-hoc committees no longer terrorise their unsuspecting neighbours as night falls. Now they help them. Ken Powell reports.

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The siege of Weaver Square in the early 1980s featured pitched battles between groups including Concerned Parents and Gardai.

More recently a brutal beating caused the death of addict Josie Dwyer. Events such as these have given south-city anti-drug activists a reputation for violence towards drug-dealers and others suspected of "anti-social activities".

Today a citywide network of residents’ vetting committees shares information about people evicted from local authority estates for "anti-social behaviour".

So "anti-social" tenants are being peacefully blacklisted at committee meetings, but are they still getting black-eyed as well? Are balaclava-clad thugs with baseball bats still terrorising their unsuspecting neighbours as night falls on south-city Corporation estates?

"No, I would say not," says Mick Hinney, community sergeant at Kevin Street Garda Station.

"If the vigilante beatings are still happening in our district, they are not being reported to us. On the whole, things appear to be looking up on that front. There have been no reported incidents of vigilante activity recently," he says.

He credits Dublin Corporation’s housing management policies for the sharp decrease in vigilante activity: "The Corporation allows tenants a say in who comes to live in their area in the first place. The residents now work closer with the Corporation and Gardai when fellow tenants are suspected of ‘anti-social’ behaviour," added the sergeant.

Corporation housing officers Jim O’Halloran and Gerard Geoghegan have been looking after south-city complexes since autumn 1997. They operate from a flat in Mercer House, meeting regularly with tenants’ associations to discuss new lettings and tenants’ complaints.

"We are out and about on the ground, on-call and among the community, not tied-up in an office away from the people we serve. We always know what’s going on, so we can act swiftly when there are any problems or a flats become vacant," said Jim O’Halloran. "Committees are free to contact us any time. We set up an appointment and then we interview prospective tenants together," he adds.

However, Kieran Murphy, director of housing justice agency Threshold, is concerned that not all of the committees are as democratic as he would like.

Among his concerns are: "Who are on these committees? Are they elected? If so, who appoints them? How transparent are their methods? What are their sources of information? Are they reliable? How up-to-date are they? Do they have a blacklist? If so, can people have a look at? And who decides what constitutes ‘anti-social’ behaviour anyway?"

Jim O’Halloran says he finds most committees fair. "All in all, I believe they are representative of the people living in the various complexes," he told The Liberty. He admits there is not the same strength of community ethos in all neighbourhoods, so there could be "a minority of people interested in the well-being of some complexes".

Kieran Murphy is sceptical: "The activity of these vetting committees flies in the face of the Freedom of Information Act," he said.

"People are entitled to access information held about them by official organisations. But these committees are unofficial, so there is no accountability. If I was turned down for a housing transfer, I’d certainly want to know why. People have come to Threshold having been refused housing and not knowing why."

Andre Lyder, of St Catherine’s Combined Community Group, an umbrella organisation for south-city tenants’ associations, said the group is in close touch with other associations, northside and southside, sharing information on tenants and evictions.

He says names are circulated around the various groups, but denied that the St Catherine’s group or CoCAD, another anti-drugs organisation with which he is involved, stores a blacklist.

Only one tenants’ group of ten contacted admitted to keeping a blacklist. A spokeswoman for School Street tenants’ association said they have a list of a dozen names that was effectively a blacklist of people deemed to be "unsuitable tenants".

A Dublin Corporation housing spokesman agrees with Seargant Hinney’s view that the days of baseball bats and kangaroo courts seem to be, for the most part, over. He said: "We find the vetting committees more than helpful, very reasonable people to deal with. There is consultation with them at every stage and everything is done more or less through a consensus approach," he says.