Scanner shop ‘entirely legal’

YOU DON’T need to be a crack code breaker to spy on the Gardaí.

Less than £200 can get you a radio scanner which enables you tune in and eavesdrop on their every movement.

South Circular Road-based Maurice Griffin is one of Ireland’s biggest scanner dealers, and makes no secret of his trade. But he admits that "maybe 40 per cent of people who buy them are robbers or junkies who use them to track down the whereabouts of the Gardaí."

His satellite and radio store has been selling scanners since 1983 and on average he sells about 2,000 a year. "Last month was unbelievable, we sold more than 250," he revealed. The store proprietor also wholesales them for electrical appliances stores nation-wide. Today I’ve someone coming up from Mullingar and I supply them to shops all over the country," he told The Liberty.

Maurice accepts scanners are a thorn in the side of the Gardaí but claims he is just trying to earn a crust: "It’s a livelihood and I do sell them to genuine people."

Eavesdropping on Gardaí hit the headlines again recently after the getaway car used in the foiled Dalkey robbery was found to contain a scanner he had sold. Maurice received much publicity after the bungled robbery; a blown-up cutting of an interview he did with a national newspaper adorns the wall behind the counter in the shop.

Maurice says he can identify any model he has sold, but warns: "If you ban them they will become a black-market commodity, and they’ll be harder to trace. "It’s great for people who are lonely or on their own. Old people love to tune in to the Gardaí to hear what’s going on, it’s exciting"

Scanning Scandals

SINCE the attempted Dalkey robbery in January radio scanners have been the source of much debate.

The issue has arisen in the Dáil following the exposure of the Garda’s vulnerability. Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, was pressured by both Fine Gael and the Labour party to ban them.

A typical scanner can tune both 088 mobile phones and Garda communications. Their use by criminals has given the Gardaí a black eye which will be hard to recover from.

Since the criminal elements in society have found a chink in the Gardaí’s armour there has been plans to revamp their current system to a more secure digital communications network.

A scanner for listening to air-traffic control and shipping radio can be bought over the counter for under £30. Most of the scanners in Ireland are imported from Holland but are generally manufactured in the US.