There was a grim sense of inevitability when the recent spate of armed robberies culminated yesterday in two deaths. The deceased were raiders who were shot by gardaí during an attempted post office robbery in Co Dublin.
It would be inherently wrong to minimise the loss of life involved: no life is cheap. However, the Garda operation will be seen by many as a success in that an armed robbery was foiled and police officers, staff, customers and other members of the public were uninjured.
Great credit is due to gardaí who risk their lives confronting criminals. But given that the five-man gang was apparently armed with a single gun and does not appear to have opened fire, the facts of the incident must be made public. Issues arise over the extent of the threat posed by the raiders and whether that threat was met with appropriate force; as well as the nature of intelligence available to gardaí at the outset. Asking questions does not imply that legitimate answers do not exist. Nor is there anything "weak-kneed" (to coin a phrase used by the Taoiseach yesterday) in seeking such information. The public interest and the Garda itself are best served by transparency.
Some people will take comfort - wrongly - from the fact that two men who engaged in violent crime, died in violent circumstances and will commit no further crimes. This is a dangerous characterisation and should be resisted. It is a short step to advocating an approach, evident in the period prior to the murder of Veronica Guerin, where the killing of criminals by other criminals is tolerated because the victims are deemed to be no loss to society. Experience shows, however, that if criminals believe they can escape prosecution when they use guns to settle scores, they will do so more frequently. Crime remorselessly begets crime.
This State is facing a challenge in how it responds to increasing gun-related offences, as evidenced by seven killings in the past two months and the series of armed robberies. In this regard, so-called Operation Anvil, an initiative announced by the Minister for Justice last week, is welcome - in so far as it goes. Some €6.5 million has been set aside to fund 15,000 hours of garda overtime over a period of at least four months. The targets are the perpetrators of these recent murders and robberies, the identity of most of whom are said to be known to detectives. The obvious weakness of the plan is that no matter how laudable the results, it is limited in duration.
What is required is a longer term response involving the rigorous style of deterrence and investigation promised as part of Operation Anvil. This should be combined with a properly funded inter-agency drive to break the cycle of crime early in the lives of young people who seem destined to break the law. The record of successive governments in relation to the latter is lamentable. Such long term thinking and short and medium term investment will not create a crime-free society nor an immediate electoral dividend. But it can deliver real progress.