February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The latest killing came at 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning. A criminal gang burst into a house in the Finglas area of Dublin looking for a rival drug-dealer. They found him and shot him.
The fact that such cold-blooded score settling can now take place in broad daylight in Ireland is horrific enough, but what happened next was even more chilling.
The gang came across a hard-working apprentice plumber named Anthony Campbell. The 20-year-old was doing his job in the kitchen of the house. He had nothing to do with the narcotics trade. They shot him dead anyway.
For most of last week, John Cunniffe of Kilkenny devoted his time to raising more than $100,000 for a local charity. But on Friday, a gunman held up his family post office and ran off with some money.
Outraged by what was taking place, Cunniffe chased the bandits down the busy street. The gunman turned, and shot him in the stomach. He died a short time after. Later, an unemployed Chinese asylum-seeker was arrested, a gun and cash recovered.
Everyone knows that the Ireland of the 21st century is a rapidly changing country. Irish Americans accept that the price of economic prosperity and the new entrepreneur culture is the partial loss of a the more gentle, at times dull, society of the past.
But must the country attempt to reinvent the wheel at every stage? In cities right across the United States, Irish-American police officers have a vast wealth of experience of combating organized crime.
Today we suggest to Ireland’s minister for justice: why not ask for advice?