A noticeable minority of roads policing gardaí are “unproductive” and “unconcerned with doing an effective and professional job”, a damning independent report has found.
The Crowe Report was commissioned by Garda headquarters last year after an anonymous garda-turned-whistleblower found some senior members of An Garda Síochána were “afraid” to intervene when subordinates were persistently performing poorly.
The report was presented to Garda headquarters in June and published in full on Thursday morning.
It is scathing in its assessment of some roads policing officers, as well as their managers.
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The majority of Roads Policing Unit (RPU) members are professional and productive, the authors state. But there is a minority “who are disinterested in being productive and effective, and who are able to get away with such behaviour, to the frustration of their colleagues, supervisors and managers”.
There is also “wide variations” in the productivity of RPUs around the State.
At the heart of the problem is the interpretation of An Garda’s Performance and Learning Framework (PALF), an internal policy. According to the report, this policy is widely understood to prevent Garda supervisors from proactively managing their subordinates.
“In effect, this is significantly frustrating the right of management to manage,” the report states.
As a result, Garda managers and supervisors may be in breach of the force’s code of ethics, which calls on officers to rigorously oppose unprofessional or corrupt behaviour.
There is a marked reluctance among supervisors “to proactively manage their staff resources” and to hold RPU members to account, the report states.
A lack of resources is also a major contributing factor to the problem, it adds.
In response, outgoing Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said the report makes for “stark reading”.
He noted that some members had no issue with openly telling the report’s authors about their lack of interest in roads policing and describing how they go about avoiding work.
It is also unsatisfactory that their supervisors do not believe they can engage in performance management of these members, Mr Harris said.
Commenting on the then unpublished report last month, Elaine Byrne, the head of the Policing and Community Safety Authority (PCSA), a Garda oversight agency, said the report was a “wake-up” call for An Garda, adding that the authority had “concerns about the absence of performance management within the guards”.
She described as “shocking” the way some gardaí openly expressed their lack of interest in doing their jobs when the personnel who were reviewing roads policing across the force went out on duty with them.
