There are clear lessons for the Garda in the Barr report on the Abbeylara killing, writes Tom Clonan.
The Barr report of the tribunal of inquiry into the fatal shooting of John Carthy at Abbeylara on April 20th 2000 directs serious criticism at the functioning of Garda command and control during the siege. In a section entitled "A summary of command failures at Abbeylara" contained within Chapter 8 of the report, a litany of basic errors in siege management are outlined.
According to Mr Justice Barr's report, the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) tactical team that was centrally involved in the management of the incident had evolved a strategy of attempting to "evacuate", "isolate", "contain" and "negotiate" with the deceased in the Carthy family home. In the execution of this strategy, however, several key elements appear to have unravelled for the ERU.
The report acknowledges that the situation which confronted gardaí at Abbeylara was a "non-preplanned operation" or "spontaneous" emergency incident. Nevertheless, consistent with international expert testimony on such spontaneous critical incidents involving firearms, the report recommends as a priority that Garda management evolve comprehensive generic response plans and intensive collective training for future operations involving stand-offs and other critical incidents with armed elements.
In terms of negotiation, the report lists a number of critical failures on the part of senior Garda officers in handling John Carthy's deteriorating behaviour in the hours leading up to his death. Gardaí failed to take the basic step of interviewing Mr Carthy's GP and his psychiatrist in order to ascertain fully his state of mind and physical and mental status. Much of Mr Carthy's volatile behaviour might subsequently have been better understood in the context of his mental illness. Given his volatile and erratic behaviour, it might have better informed gardaí later in the siege as to the appropriate level of force necessary to subdue him.
The report also criticises the manner in which family members close to Mr Carthy - including his mother Rose and his sister Marie - were not interviewed by gardaí in depth and as a priority in order to fully understand his motivation and likely behaviour at the scene. It would appear that John Carthy was a relatively unknown quantity to the garda - who was not a trained negotiator - who was attempting to negotiate with him. This may also explain why he was not provided with cigarettes during the siege - a basic measure that would have been employed in similar circumstances internationally.
In terms of evacuation and isolation, the report is highly critical of the manner in which gardaí cordoned off the Carthy household during the tragic incident. According to international best practice, in such circumstances a comprehensive outer cordon ought to have been established many hundreds of metres around the Carthy homestead. Within this outer cordon, an inner cordon of armed local Garda officers and the ERU team should have been in place to ensure a "sterile" environment free of onlookers, bystanders and others.
The Garda cordon around the Carthy household would appear to have been poorly enforced, porous and ill-co-ordinated. Amazingly, the Garda command and control centre controlling the entire scene would appear to have been sited by senior officers within a very short distance of the Carthy household. The report strongly suggests that the post ought to have been located well back from the incident and linked to the scene by CCTV cameras and effective radio communications. The report laments the lack of effective Garda command, control and communications on the day, and crucially the lack of a comprehensive log of events and command decisions during the incident.
It was in this seemingly chaotic environment that John Carthy took the fatal decision to suddenly and rapidly exit the family home. According to the report, he walked out the door and down the front path armed with a shotgun. As he exited the property, according to the report, he passed within a "few feet" of several gardaí and ERU officers.
He then began to walk in the direction of Abbeylara and - due to the poor siting of the command and control centre - rapidly closed the short distance towards it along with a knot of local gardaí and senior officers, some of whom it would seem began to run away from Mr Carthy.
In short, panic appears to have ensued, with gardaí and the ERU rapidly losing control of the situation. According to one of the international experts in the report: "If law enforcement is moving the cordon with the subject, then he has already breached the inner cordon. There is no containment. There is no perimeter."
A number of verbal warnings were then given, which Carthy ignored. Eventually a Garda detective opened fire, striking Carthy twice in the soft tissue of the upper leg. While this may reflect a creditable attempt on the part of a garda to shoot to wound - consistent with the principle of minimum force - the injuries failed to halt Carthy's progress. A second garda, armed with an Uzi sub-machinegun, subsequently shot him another two times. These shots struck him in the lower and upper back, mortally wounding him.
The report does not excoriate the individual rank-and-file gardaí who shot John Carthy. Mr Justice Barr simply states that "Sergeant Jackson's shots had not stalled the subject. The risk he presented had then become acute and immediate. In those circumstances, it was not unreasonable for Garda McCabe to decide that his duty was to shoot Mr Carthy".
The report is scathingly critical of senior gardaí and their management of the scene, which allowed John Carthy while armed to exit - unimpeded and unhindered - to the road and directly to the command and control centre and other gardaí. The force of circumstances was such that, by that stage, the shooting of John Carthy would appear to have been almost inevitable. In this regard, Mr Justice Barr states: "I have no doubt that the Garda management of the siege at Abbeylara and related matters were defective . . . and fell far short of what was required to contend with the situation successfully and to minimise the risk to life."
Mr Justice Barr's report also goes on to consider non-lethal weaponry which might have been employed. The report describes in detail a number of non-lethal weapons that may in time be employed by gardaí in such circumstances, including kinetic energy rounds - such as sponge grenades, beanbag and sock rounds - CS gas sprays, water cannon, electrical devices such as Tasers and laser or light devices.
Tasers, or electric stun guns, with a range of up to 21 feet, might have been used to incapacitate John Carthy as he exited the Carthy homestead, passing as he did within a few feet of several gardaí. Unfortunately, gardaí were not armed with such equipment in 2000. Had they been, this tragic incident might have ended differently. With gun crime dramatically on the increase - along with assaults and serious offences involving other weapons - the lessons learned from this episode may well save lives in future critical incidents. This will only happen, however, if the recommendations of the Barr tribunal are implemented, with gardaí receiving the proper collective training and equipment necessary to police a rapidly changing and ever more violent society.
It is also essential that Garda training deals effectively with mental illness, along with a concerted effort by the media to understand the phenomenon of mental illness and to desist from caricaturing and demonising its sufferers. That would be a fitting legacy to the memory of John Carthy.
Dr Tom Clonan is a security analyst. He lectures in the School of Media at the DIT.