By John Spain

Last week here people were saying that Dublin is getting to be like Chicago in the 1930s. Well, it’s not quite as bad as that yet, but with open war erupting on the city streets between two major drug gangs it did feel a bit like it at times over the past couple of weeks.

It’s not on the scale of Chicago in its criminal heyday, but the comparison has some validity because the merciless assassination of gang members on both sides here mirrors the viciousness of the Al Capone era.

This latest round in the feud between two of the big drug gangs in Dublin so far has claimed three lives, all of them up-close shootings designed to kill. In that sense, the killings are like executions rather than street gun battles.

These guys are out to kill each other, to eliminate the competition. It’s a mixture of a gangland grudge match that has been going on for five years now, and a current turf war in the hugely lucrative contemporary Dublin drugs trade.

The first two killings just over a week ago were of two members of one of the gangs, shot together at point blank range. Over the past decade there have been regular gangland executions in Dublin, but a double murder like this was shocking even for us.

It was shocking, yes, but at least respectable Dublin could console itself with the fact that it had happened out in Firhouse, an area on the edge of the vast sprawling suburb on the south west side of Dublin called Tallaght. In fact Tallaght is almost like a separate city, as big as Limerick, and some sections of it are rough, with drug, alcohol and violence problems, especially among young males.

Once unpalatable things like street executions are confined to areas far from the city center and the more expensive parts of the capital the good citizens of respectable Dublin don’t feel too threatened. Occasionally you hear them saying that the Gardai (police) should just stand back and let the drug gangsters kill each other.

What followed three days later however, made respectable Dublin sit up and gasp. Because the next killing was in Clontarf, a leafy old world suburb of Victorian redbricks and rose-filled gardens on the bay on Dublin’s Northside, a most desirable address just two miles from O’Connell Street where even modest houses can cost a million.

A member of the gang who had carried out the double murder was spotted at a rock concert in the city and was followed in a car by a hit squad. They caught up with him on Clontarf Road on the seafront and shot him several times in the head through his car’s tinted window. The driver of the car escaped execution by running for his life, knocking frantically on doors and eventually losing himself through back gardens.

And since then there have been other incidents, including a drive-by shooting, although so far no one else has been shot.

Alarm bells rang in government circles because the gang warfare appeared to be spilling over in a way that might seem to be engulfing the city. As one political advisor said to me, “It’s one thing when they’re killing each other out on the estates (the deprived public housing areas on the outskirts of the city) because they don’t vote out there anyway, it’s a different matter when it happens in an area like Clontarf. That frightens the real voters and that makes it an issue.”

The government response was to immediately announce a 50-strong squad of detectives to target the drug gangs, on top of the extra resources already committed to fighting gang crime in the city. The gang-busting squad moved swiftly to get the lid back on the situation, searching the houses of gang members and putting permanent tails on the leaders.

Purely by coincidence the explosion in gang violence came just as the government was announcing the estimates for state spending for the coming year. There was a record increase in funding for crime fighting.

The Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said he was allocating Œ1,290 million, a rise of 13%, to pay for the war on crime in the coming year. The increase in Garda funding is the biggest since the foundation of the state.

All of which sounds very dramatic and makes the thugs involved sound very impressive. The reality is more prosaic.

The two gangs involved in the current war are actually from the same neighborhood, the Crumlin/ Drimnagh area on the western side of the city, old working class suburbs which have slowly deteriorated over the years.

The gang leaders are yesterday’s teenage joyriders, muggers and petty thieves, poorly educated and not the brightest, who are now in their 20s and 30s. Around them they have a few dozen runners, some of whom are still in their teens. Collectively they are what Dubliners call “jumped up gurriers.”

About 10 years ago these guys were all in the same big gang, but somehow there was a split and a war began after one guy was killed. It’s been going on ever since — seven gang members have been killed in the feud — and it makes very little sense. It’s revenge, tit-for-tat stuff, carried out with grotesque brutality by guys frequently out of their heads on their own product.

In the beginning the gang was encouraged by the right hand man of one of Dublin’s most notorious criminals, Martin Cahill, also known as the General. The gang members are the next generation, after the General and the Monk and John Gilligan and the rest of the older criminals.

The new breed is low on intelligence and finesse, impulsive, savage, and frequently drug addicted themselves. In normal times they might not have got beyond their own areas.

But thanks to the Celtic Tiger, the last 10 years has seen an abnormal, exponential growth in the demand for recreational drugs here, cocaine for the yuppies and ecstasy tablets and cannabis for their kids.

The market exploded and huge fortunes could be made even by slow learners like the unsophisticated Crumlin/Drimnagh gang. The primary requirement for success was not brains, it was muscle and a mindless determination to dominate and collect, either by extreme violence or even execution.

Through the older generation of criminals, connections were made with traffickers in Europe and the new generation was off on a rollercoaster. And with success, of course, came the rows and what has now emerged as a deadly war.

The level of some of it is almost farcical. One security reporter here over the weekend recounted the story of a few members of one gang holed up in a bedroom in the Holiday Inn in Pearse Street near the city center in 2000 adulterating their cocaine.

Using coffee grinders bought in a local discount store, they worked through the night. But other guests complained about the whining noise and staff called the Gardai, who found the room covered in white dust and caught two of the gang.

This bust led to the discovery of a big stash of cocaine a few miles away, a serious financial loss to the gang for which someone had to pay. One of the two caught at the hotel was suspected of talking and he was murdered, executed while he was standing outside a fast food restaurant in Crumlin.

That started the feud and was followed by a killing in retaliation, which started a series of non-fatal drive-by shootings, attacks on the homes of rival gang members and so on. And it’s gone on like that over the last few years, with a gangland killing every few months, not all of them connected with these two gangs and their war.

Of course, the temptation is to let them get on with it and wipe each other out. But effectively that puts them outside the law, which is exactly where they want to be.

It also ignores the danger to ordinary people who come in contact with the drug gangs and it implies that they can run their operations without interference. None of that is acceptable in a law-abiding society.

What is most frustrating in all of this is that the present situation here is more a failure of the legal system than of the Gardai. The system has been so loaded in favor of the bad guys by well-meaning reformers, rights activists and lawyers out to make a cynical buck, that getting convictions is difficult.

One example is the way these guys behave when arrested. They know they cannot be touched so they say nothing.

All interviews have to be taped. If the detectives ask the same question too often that can be interpreted by a court as intimidation and result in the evidence being thrown out.

Defense lawyers get their clients to demand the tapes, which legally must be given to them, and these are then combed for anything that can be used and to prepare answers and deal with potential witnesses. If a junior gang member is pulled by the Gardai for questioning, the gang leader will demand that he get his tapes so that these can be checked for any weaknesses.

From a human rights point of view, propounded by legal academics and others, these and other safeguards make perfect sense. In practice, in the real world, they make the job of the Gardai impossible when they’re trying to break these psychos and their soldiers.

Of course getting people to give evidence against these guys is extremely difficult. Witness intimidation is not necessary. Witnesses know the score in advance. They know that if they give evidence they are signing their own death certificates.

A further complication is the Northern connection and the paramilitary guns and gunmen that are now around. These young hoods moved quickly from clubs and knives to guns but it was the paramilitary connection which allowed them to graduate to heavy automatic weapons in the last few years.

The getaway car used in the double murder a week ago had been stolen in Lisburn, Co. Antrim. Why would young hoods go that far? Maybe they have friends up there.

In spite of all the talk about fighting drugs, it is well known that some Republican elements line their pockets by licensing drug dealers in some areas or even getting involved directly themselves.

The biggest problem in all this, however, is the demand. That is the fundamental issue that Irish society has yet to face up to, the massive increase in demand among the otherwise responsible citizens.

The huge growth of the drugs business here is a by-product of the boom and the purchasing power of the Irish gangs has turned them into major dealers in the European market. Except that at heart they’re still simple gurriers who have been turned into psychos by the drugs.