The Garda Síochána can learn valuable lessons in fighting gang violence and organised crime from police forces in America's biggest cities, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said.
Speaking from Los Angeles after a meeting with the city's police chief Bill Bratton, Mr McDowell acknowledged US gangs and US police forces were very different from those in Ireland.
"You can't just translate one system to another but you can draw some very useful lessons in terms of accountability, effectiveness, matching resources to problems, crime analysis and getting at particular focuses of crime," he said.
A former New York police chief, Mr Bratton developed the Comstat system, which tracks crime patterns and persistent offenders by location, diverts resources to those areas with the highest crime and insists that local police commanders account for trends in their districts.
"This is about intelligent policing, matching resources to issues, ensuring accountability, ensuring that the people in charge of district levels of policing render an account of what they're up to, interact with their peers and account for trends in their area. [Garda Commissioner] Noel Conroy and myself are very interested in the same approach being followed in Ireland - full accountability," Mr McDowell told The Irish Times.
Los Angeles has more than 750 gangs with about 40,000 members.
Mr McDowell and Mr Conroy leave Los Angeles tomorrow for Chicago and will meet senior police officers in New York later this week. "All three [ cities] have reduced crime and Noel Conroy and myself are very anxious to learn some of their lessons and to establish links at every level between their forces and ours for exchange of information on strategies and on tactics," he said.
