The Heroin Bushfire
Over THE LAST SIX MONTHS there HAVE been radical changes in the Dublin heroin trade. They are the result of three factors ~ a series of successful operatioas by the Garda Drugs Squad, the resultant disintegration of the Dunne family's heroin empire, and the determined action taken by comuunities to evict pushers from their areas.
No single group has emerged to take the place of the Dunne family, who in their hey-day controlled an estimated forty per cent of the Dublin heroin market some members of the family are still involved in the heroin trade, in partiicular one brother currently operating on the northside of the city. This group is now, however, one among many, a considerable number of which have been formed over the past six months to supply a demand which shows no signs of abating.
There has been surprisingly little violence between these new groupings, and there is as yet-no evidence of any particular one striving f6r dominance. There is a sense that the market is big enough for everyorne, and that-there is more to be gained by peaceful co-existence and cooperation than by open warfare.
Open warfare is in fact more likely to break out between the rapidly organising cornrrraniey groups and the networks of pushers than between the pushers themselves. It has become 3. feature of the Dublin heroin trade that it has been forced through community action to shift from one area to another and into parts of the «:;,i1y where it had previously only existed on a small scale .. As more community drugs action groups form in different areaS as far apart as Iallaght and Ballymun, they pass information to each other on the activities of pushers evicted ftonfone particular locality and moving into another.
A central Dublin eommittee.of community-based drugs action groups has now been formed to enable a more effiicleat exchange of information. It is that committee which organised yesterday's protest march to Dail Eireann.
One of the effects of the success of the Drugs Squad during the past year has been. that Dublin herein dealers have learned from the mistakes of their convicted colleagues and have radically altered theirmethods of operation so as toavoid detection.
Heroin imported into the country is no longer stored in bulk. On arrival, it is now immediately broken up into small quantities, and stored in several, constantly changing locations in the city. Because of this, the Garda Drugs Squad now recognise. that large seizures have become a thing of the past.
The means of importation has also changed. While couriers travelling by plane and carrying amounts of heroin On their person are still used, dublin dealers have diversified. An increasingly popular smuggling route is across the Irish Sea from Britain, with the heroin concealed on artiennlated trucks. One kilogram of pure hemin is compact and easy to' hide on SO large a vehicle, and has a potential street value of over £2 million. In some cases, the driver may not even be aware that his lorry is being used to smuggle heroin. Magill has established that during the Christmas period two loads of half a kilogram of heroin were smuggled into the country in this way.
The source of heroin on sale in Dublin has gradually shifted from Amsterdam to London, and many Irish dealers have found regular contacts in the LondOn underworld. They have now reached a level of sophistication whereby they have access to facilities in London to test the purity of the heroin before purchase.
The sophistication has also spread onto the streets of Dublin, where the actual mechanics of the heroin trade have developed to a point where it has become almost impossible to apprehend a pusher in the act of selling the drug. The trade is now conducted in open spaces, where the dealer can see if he or she is being observed. As the use of and houses increases the chances of detection, street corners, shopping centres and open fields are preferred.
Whenever pushers are approached by someone they suspect of being a Garda, they simply drop any heroin they have °usually not very much - on the ground. They can only be arrested if caught with it in their possession.
In Crumlin, which is still the centre of the Dublin heroin trade, the various groups distribute heroin in £10 packs to their pushers by means of a courier network of small boys, all of them living in the area.
The boys are hired and fired on a daily basis. They are paid £10 a day, and rarely carry more than three or four £10 packs at anyone time. They have been trained immeediately to drop the heroin on the ground on the slightest suspicion, and to retrieve it if nothing happens. When deliivering to a flat, they lay false trails by visiting seven or eight flats in a block, making it impossible for the Gardai to know to which flat the heroin has. been delivered. The pushers themselves have also become more cautious. Addicts now frequently find that they give money to one individual and receive the desired amount of heroin from another.
The increased sophistication of even the smaller grouppings of heroin dealers has inevitably made the job of the Garda Drugs Squad more difficult. They still have neither the personnel nor the equipment to make a significant impact on the problem. One measure which they feel would increase their detection rate is the use of a procedure known as entrapment, whereby aGarda can actually engage in transactions of an illegal nature, the evidence of which can be used to convict a suspect. At present, entrapment is not used by the Gardai. The legal position surrounding it is unclear, and the courts are known to frown on its use.
Ma BAKER AND HER SONS ARE AMONG the largest pushers in the Crumlin area of Dublin. They have between 150 and 200 regular clients and operate all over Crumlin, but usually not outside it. Five of her distributors. are members of her own family. A further six are small boys. The boys are all local and she does not use kids who take heroin. She also changes them regularly. Her nephew, who is currently charged with possession of heroin with intent to supply, also distributes for her. One of her sons is serving an eighteen months sentence in Mountjoy. Two of her other sons are facing drug-related charges.
Baker is not her real name, but she is widely known by other pushers and by addicts as Ma Baker, a corruption of Ma Barker, the name of the machine gun-wielding head of an infamous criminal family in the US in the Thirties.
No one gets any credit from Ma Baker, neither addict nor pusher. Thus she is never owed money and has little need to resort to violence. However, she is reported to have a lot of muscle available to her . One associate says that she could put together a small army, if necessary.
In 1982 one of her sons was running into trouble with a youngster from the same area and a fight was brewing. Within a half hour of Ma Baker giving the order, four cars pulled up outside her house in the inner city of Dublin where she lives.
About eight men got out of the cars. One was armed with a scythe for cutting grass, another with a hatchet and a third with a baton. Her neighbours were out watching the proceedings and they report that she instructed the gang not to attack. She had made her point.
The living room of the house she rents from Dublin Corporation is sacrosanct and no dealing has ever been done there. In her living room she stores all the souvenirs from her trips abroad and her collection of Waterford glass.
One former addict who bought heroin from her more than eighteen months ago in her kitchen, reports that she conducted her trade in a brusque and business-like manner. "In and out and no messing," was how he described dealing with Ma Baker. The heroin was divided and weighed and laid out on the mantlepiece in the kitchen in £10 packs. A fire was lit continuously in the kitchen, and in the event of raids the heroin was thrown on the kitchen fire and disappeared up the chimney in a puff of smoke. There were glass jars in the kitchen stuffed with money.
She has seven sons. The one who is in Mountjoy had formerly dealt in heroin in the Crumlin area. One son still lives in Crumlin and two live in Ballyferrnct. The others move from one place to another. Although there is no eviddence that Ma Baker has sold heroin from her own kitchen during the last year, neighbours report that as recently as the third Sunday in January, addicts were queueing outside for supplies. Ma Baker was out, but some of her sons were at home.
In the last year she has become more careful and more professional and her operation has grown. When the house is raided by the Drug Squad, as it often is, she remains calm and does not resist; she telephones her solicitor. Often her sons have to sleep out in houses of friends and associates in Crumlin; it is said that she doesn't want them in the house because they might have drugs on them. She does, however, exert control over them. When one of them spent some of the money owed to her he disappeared for a few days rather than face Ma with no money.
Some time ago one of her sons moved in with a couple and their child inCrumlin , Both parents were addicts, and for the use of the flat the son provided them with enough heroin to keep themselves going. But some of her sons are not involved in criminal activities, Others divide their time between ordinary jobs and working for their mother.
Ma Baker's supply of heroin comes from two sources: she has contacts in London and has imported quantities from these sources. She also buys from (and sells to) other Dublin dealers. She banks or invests her money. She is known to have invested in London stocks and shares.
She was born in Birmingham in February 1939 and was brought to Dublin when she was three years old. She is separated from her husband; however, they remain on very good terms, and he occasionally takes care of the two younger girls, although he is not their father. One of them is to make her First Communion this year and the other her Confirmation. Towards the end of last year there was considerable publicity surrounding the fact that they were missing for a couple of days and were found on the Naas Road.
Up to the time one of her sons was accused of murder she lived in Crumlin. She has a history of petty crime, and in February 1980, in the Dublin Circuit Court, she was given an eighteen months suspended sentence for receiving stolen goods. In April 1980 she was given probation for obstructing a Garda in the course of his duty.
Her son, accused of murder, was given four separate trials for the same crime. The first trial was stopped for technical reasons; in the next three the jury failed to agree and finally her son was released. Evidence of Garda brutaality was produced at all four trials. On the day the fourth trial finished, in July 1983, Ma Baker attended a meeting in the Gresham Hotel called by the family of Donal Dunne to complain about the fact that Malcolm Macarthur was not prosecuted for the murder of their son. She spoke about the persecution of her own son and her own family.
Between the first trial and the last her circumstances had changed considerably. She moved out of Crumlin and squatted in an army barracks and was then housed by the Corporation in one of the new red brick houses in the inner city. During his trials, her son became addicted to heroin, and his mother began to sell it. She saw the opening in the Crumlin area and she moved in to sell heroin to her former neighbours.
In August 1982 a man was shot dead in Ballyfermot. He was known to Ma Baker and her friends and a benefit gig was held for his family; people paid £1.50 to get in. About half way through the night Ma stood up and announced that there would be a collection. She took £10 out of her purse and dropped it into the collection bag. "I'll start the ball rolling," she said. "And see if any of you can beat that"·
She has a heart of gold; everybody says that about her. When the kids in the area were having a disco she provided orange and crisps. When there was a party in her street last summer she provided a couple of bottles of spirits for the adults. If there is a death in a family she knows she will offer he!? or money. She will send a wreath.
She visits prisons. At the moment she is refusing to see her own son in Mountjoy because he is still taking heroin in the prison, but she visits another man, a Northerner, who seldom receives visits. When she is in England she also visits prisoners. She visits the North and was there for the recent Bloody Sunday commemoration.
A small, stout, flaxen-haired, sharp-locking woman, she is a familiar figure driving in her big car between the centre city and Crumlin. One of the charms on her bracelet is a car, and her car is a vital factor in her life and her converrsation. She talks about picking up her children from school in the car, about having the child of a notorious terrorist in the car, about taking her car with her to Britain when she goes there.
More than once her car has caused her problems. In November 1979 in the Dublin District Court she was fined £100 for careless driving and refusing to give a blood sample. Her most recent problems with the Gardai over her car have been explained to all her neighbours and friends. She says she was beaten up in a Garda station, having been stopped by three plainclothes detectives in an unmarked car. She has loose teeth and missing teeth to prove it. She says she is taking an action against the Gardai. Garda sources, on the other hand, say that she was drunk and abusive, and they had to literally sit on her in the back of the car to get her back to the station.
She drinks a lot, usually pints of Guinness, and enjoys talking the night away in public houses. She is friendly with various members of the Dunne family and drinks with them in a pub in the south inner city. She also often drinks in the same pub in the morning and the afternoon. She complains about her health, particularly about her bad heart. She travels a lot, often taking her daughters with her. Recently she was in Portugal; she knows Malta well, her purse has a scene from Malta embossed on it. She visits prisoners when she is in Malta. She also knows Spain. Next month she plans to take her daughters off to Birmingham for a while. She enjoys playing poker.
Just last week a woman in Teresa's Gardens tried to get into the bathroom of her flat but the door was locked. Inside, her 20-year-old son had overdosed on two £10 packs of heroin. The syringe was still stuck in his arm.
In panic the woman ran to the recently opened commuunity centre in Teresa's Gardens. Two men came with her to the flat and one of them climbed through the window. The young man was slumped on the toilet seat. The man recognised the symptoms of an overdose and began jumping U? and down on his chest. The youth eventually responded aad recovered. He had bought his supply that day in a part of Crumlin which is serviced by Ma Baker, the woman with the heart of gold.
THREE YEARS AGO EVERY KID IN ST Teresa's Gardens knew what a junkie was. They knew that they were the people who put needles into themselves on the stairs, and who sometimes dropped their trousers to find a vein that hadn't collapsed in their backside.
The first junkies had come from London in 1973, but there hadn't been many of them. Eight years later the flats were riddled with heroin addicts. The children played with the syringes they found lying on the stairs. Everybody knew somebody that was on gear and they felt powerless to do anything about it or about the taxis that pulled into the Gardens all night every night with junkies who came looking for a fix.
In June 1983 some people living in St Teresa's Gardens produced a play called "Fight Back". The play was staged in the Youth Centre and the people of the Gardens came to see the play. Then they had a meeting.
They had tried to hold meetings before in the Gardens but few people ever turned up. Community meetings weren't popular because most people didn't want to be in the community anyway. The heroin problem had caused alienation and suspicion; the appearance of the flats had disintegrated due to lack of maintenance. Teresa's Gardens in 1981 was a place to get out of.
As a result of the meeting after the first performance of the play "Fight Back", a woman's keep-fit class was started. There was no particular reason for a keep-fit class. It just seemed to be a good idea.
In the evenings when the women exercised in Our Lady's Youth Centre they talked about themselves, their children - and drugs.
When the next meeting was called in the Gardens the women made sure that people came. .
At that meeting, on June 13 1983, there were about 70 people, much talk and much confusion. What were they to do to stop the pushing in the flats? Somebody suggested that they should go to the drug pushers, ask them to stop or tell them to leave the flats. Four people were nominated to pass on the message. They included Paul Humphries, who had been active in the community for five ,years.
By September there were just three families pushing in the flats. It was obvious that they weren't prepared to just leave. A meeting was held and a vote was passed giving the three remaining families a week to get out. The next day they moved out with relatives and announced they would he taking legal action. A member of the Dunne family supplied the solicitor.
That night nearly 300 people formed a human chain outside the flats passing the furniture down the stairs and stacking it neatly under the balconies of the first floor flats. They offered to lay on vans to help the pushers move but they said they could do it themselves. Two families left the country and went to Birmingham, the other went to Tallaght. On October 30 last year a dance was held in Our Lady's Hall beside the Gardens. It was called the Victory Dance.
THE HORROR OF LIFE IN A COMMUNITY dominated by heroin abuse was by no means confined to Teresa's Gardens. Residents of the flats complexes in Dolphin House, Oliver Bond House, Bridgefoot Street and Fatima Mansions had lived with it for over two years. But in the autumn of last year they noticed a sharp increase in the heroin trade in their areas, and particularly that more people were coming into the flats from other parts of the city to buy their supply. The increase was a direct result of the closure, by the commmunity, of Teresa's Gardens as a major outlet for the sale of heroin.
Shortly after the action taken by the residents of Teresa's Gardens, those living in Dolphin House followed suit. They were assisted by members of the Teresa's Gardens committtee, and they adopted the same tactics. Within a matter of weeks, Dolphin House was "drug free".
As recently as last December a group of small children in Bridgefoot Street flats were playing with syringes left lying on the stairs the night before. One of them was accidentally stabbed with a syringe with some heroin still in it. She was rushed to hospital and treated for an overdose of heroin. There was no one in Bridgefoot Street flats addicted to heroin. The area was used entirely by outsiders for the purpose of both buying and selling the drug.
In the second week of December, the residents of Bridgefoot Street followed the example set by Teresa's Gardens. They mounted a patrol and stopped addicts coming into the flats. As they turned them away, they noticed that most went straight across the road and into the Oliver Bond flats complex. Bridgefoot Street was "drug free", but the trade in Oliver Bond increased immediately. Oliver Bond has as yet no community drugs action group.
As the communities rose up against them, the pushers using the various flats complexes as their base moved and continued trading elsewhere. One who was forced out of Teresa's Gardens moved to Tallaght, as did another who was evicted from Dolphin House. Some left the country and moved to Britain, but most simply shifted their operaations onto the streets of Crumlin. After a series of Garda Drugs Squad busts made in flats and houses, they began to trade in the open, where they felt themselves to be less vulnerable.
In Crumlin, the trade moves from street to street, never staying in anyone place for very long. Local children are paid to wait and inform addicts of a new location. For the past three weeks, an open space at a bus terminus at the Clonmacnoise Road roundabout has been used. The pusher sits in a car, parked on the side of the green. When appproached by an addict, he digs up the heroin which has been buried, for safekeeping, in the green.
There are currently twelve groups dealing in heroin in the Crumlin area. Ma Baker's is one of the largest and also the most secure, as it consists largely of members of her own family. Many of the other groups are loosely-knit, and are formed on the basis of temporary convenience to those involved. They are being constantly restructured as memmbers leave to join other groups or to attempt to form their own organisations.
Although no single group has emerged to control the area, Crumlin remains the centre of the heroin trade in Dublin. There is hardly a street which has not been affeccted. Intimidation of the residents is widespread and many have until now been afraid to speak of what they have seen.
LAST SUMMER STRANGE PEOPLE BEGAN to hang around the Cashel Avenue area. The people in the houses around noticed them. They came in the late afternoon and stayed ia a the night. One woman asked about the strange people.
Someone told her they were junkies. She had never heard the word before. There is only one entrance by road to Cashel Avenue and the people hung around the pedestrian path.
At night the people heard noises in their back gardens as the children who were employed as runners took the short cuts along the back of the houses. Everybody was suspected. They watched their neighbours and waited for the raids.
Tere many raids by the Drugs Squad last summer. Everybody was suspected of being an informer. If a raid was short there was suspicion about what the people in the house were telling the Gardai. When one youth was picked up by a squad car with six packs of heroin and released minutes later, he was branded as an informer.
Before the drugs came there was always trouble in the area with stolen cars and break-ins. Joy riders used abandon their cars in the avenue; but they stopped when the drugs came. Everything stopped when the drugs came. The police were everywhere. One woman said she could leave her purse on the street and nobody would touch it.
But the police didn't make people feel any safer. One woman found one of Ma Baker's sons burying heroin in her front garden. She told him she was going to the police. He told her he'd burn her house down. She didn't go to the police. One pusher, who suspected he had been informed on decided to leave for Tallaght. The night before he went he let a shotgun off in his back garden. A message to the people of Cashel Avenue.
On Wednesday 15 February, the head brother in Scoil Iosagain Primary School noticed two women with prams standing outside the school gates. The women were handing out small packs of heroin to the children. Brother Kenny was aghast. He called a meeting of the people of lower Crumlin. He didn't know what to expect from the meeting, but nearly 500 people turned up that Thursday night. The people in Crumlin knew there were drugs around. They knew that some of the Dunne family lived nearby. They knew the pushers hung around the roundabout outside the Transport Club on the Clogher Road. But when they heard about the women handing out packs outside the primary school it was just too much.
Patrols were set up at each end of the Aughavanagh Road. The men of lower Crumlin lit fires in oil barrels and stopped cars. Patrols went out nightly. They used walkieetalkies, as the pushers had done.
On Sunday 19 February they had their first march.
Nearly six hundred people turned up to march on the pushers - or people they thought were pushers. The march was led by the small boys from Parnell Road National School and Scoil Iosagain. Behind them came the bigger boys from the Marist College, and then the parents.
They marched through lower Crumlin on a wet and freezing day. Stopping at appointed houses and chanting:
"Pushers out - pushers out." When they were finished, a meeting was arranged for the following Wednesday night.
THERE WASN'T ENOUGH ROOM IN THE gym of Scoil Iosagain to hold all the people the following Wednesday night. Nearly one thousand residents had turned up. The trial began. The names of the people suspected of drug pushing in the area were read out and they were invited to come to the microophone and purge themselves. The defendants climbed onto the stage. There were young men who admitted taking drugs but denied pushing. "My rna wouldn't keep me in the house if I was pushing."
Sometimes the crowd believed them, sometimes they didn't. Then it was the turn of the marchers and their leaders to purge themselves. A woman in her fifties - her finger shaking with anger - screamed at the platform:
"You'll not call my sons pushers. I reared them too hard for that." A taxi driver who'd been wrongly accused demannded an apology from a member of the committee on the platform. The man wouldn't apologise. He said he was just joking.
Wacker Humphries, a brother of Paul Humphries and one of the main activists in the St Teresa's Gardens campaign, went on stage. He spoke about mistakes and retributions. On Monday night, February 20, a gang of thirty men had arrived at Wacker Humphries' flat in St Teresa's Gardens. They had come as a result of the march the previous day in lower Crumlin, Wacker was one of the men who led the march which had gone to the wrong house. The man who lived in the house was very angry. He had gone with a gang to deal with Wacker, who wasn't in his flat at the time so they wrecked his furniture and left. The following night they apologised. Wacker said from the stage at the lower Crumlin meeting on Wednesday night that he had accepted their apology because the most important thing was for the people to stick together and get the pushers out.
As THE HEROIN TRADE WAS SPILLING OUT of the inner-city flats complexes onto the streets of Crumlin, it was also increasing in other parts of the city. Ballyfermot is an example of an area where the availability of heroin has risen sharply over the past few months. Addicts living there no longer have to go elsewhere to obtain their supply - it is sold on street corners, in some known houses, around the shopping centre, and in a field, known locally as The Ranch, beside the Old Pine Tree public house. The Ranch, in partiicular, has become known throughout the city as one of the places where heroin can be bought.
There are five organised groups of pushers in Ballyferrmot, together with a number of individuals who sell the drug to maintain their own habits. One of Ma Baker's sons living in Ballyfermot is suspected of dealing in heroin.
Every Tuesday morning for the past few months a car has pulled up at The Ranch. Awaiting its arrival are usually between fifteen and twenty people. Most of them are male and in their late teens and early twenties. The driver of the car supplies them with heroin. Some of them have subseequently been seen selling the heroin, particularly around th~ shopping centre.
Another dealer, operating from his house, used to supply two £10 packs of heroin in return for a colour television set. A video machine secured a day's supply for an addict, about £80 worth. This individual accumulated so many stolen television sets and videos that he began to rent them out on a commercial basis to residents in another part of rhe city.
There is as yet no drugs action group in Ballyfermot.
There are, however, some residents who are interested in forrning one, and it was they who organised the buses to c. port people into town for the march to the Dail on February 29.
Despite the absence of an organised community group, some individual residents have taken action with regard to certain pushers. This has taken the form of observing the habits of suspected pushers and passing on the information to the Garda Drugs Squad.
Local residents recently spent two months monitoring the activities of one pusher. They had noticed groups of people waiting around outside his house and had become suspicious. After prolonged and constant observation, they contacted the Drugs Squad and told them what they knew. The next day, a van arrived on the street and parked near the pusher's house. It was unmarked, but according to the residents it was immediately identifiable as a police vehicle. The pusher spotted it coming around the corner, and he disappeared within minutes. The residents complained to the Drugs Squad. Their two month's work had all been for nothing. They were told that the Squad had no other type of vehicle available to it, that it could only use what it had been given.
LAST NOVEMBER A GROUP OF RESIDENTS in Tallaght became worried that with the spread of heroin throughout the city they might be the next to be affected. They formed the Tallaght Drugs Action Committee, with John Noonan, a local Sinn Fein activist, as chairman. It was essentially a preventative action, as there was no evidence of heroin dealing in Tallaglft at the time.
Earlier this month, however, the Tallaght committee Was informed by members of the committees in Teresa's Gardens and Dolphin House that two pushers previously active in the flats were now known to be living in the Cloonmore area of West Tallaght. They also identified a third pusher living in the Jobstown area. There was no evidence that any of these three were dealing in Tallaght itself, but all of them were known to be supplying the inner-city market.
On Tuesday 14 February, 250 people marched to the homes of the three pushers. 100 had come from Teresa's Gardens and 50 from Dolphin House. The remainder were Tallaght residents, although none were from the Cloonmore area.
The marchers had received information that one of the pushers was in the process of moving into a new squat in Cloonmore. When they reached this house, he was out. They were about to march to his previous dwelling, when some of the women from Teresa's Gardens recognised him walking around the corner. On seeing 250 people standing outside his house, he started to run away, but was chased by some of the crowd. The chase was stopped by the interrvention of a squad car which had been accompanying the march. The pusher disappeared. The march then continued to the homes of the remaining two pushers, neither of whom were in at the time.
The following day, the residents of Cloonmore, who were not aware that heroin pushers lived in their area and who had not been informed of the previous night's march, decided to take matters into their own hands. That night they marched to the house of the first pusher, the one who had been chased the night before. There was no one in the house, and so they broke in, removed the furniture and left it on the side of the road. There were no Gardai present during this incident. The pusher has not since reappeared in the area.
The next night (Thursday 16 February) the residents had decided they would march to the home of the second pusher, a brother of the first. The Gardai were out in force, with squad cars, special branch cars and two foot patrols. The march, however, did not take place. It had been disscovered earlier inthe evening that the pusher had already left. The following day, Friday, the third pusher moved out of Tallaght.
The Tallaght Drugs Action Committee currently has two houses under observation. John Noonan says that they are eighty per cent certain that there are pushers living in them, and that these pushers are dealing in Tallaght itself. The committee knows that school-children in parts of Tallaght have been offered free heroin, and syringes have been found on a site usually used for cider parties. As soon as they are one hundred per cent certain that the people under obserrvation are pushers, they will ask them either to stop or to leave.
The three pushers forced out of Tallaght earlier this month have not stopped selling heroin. The two brothers have both moved back to the inner-city, one to Fatima Mansions, the other to Oliver Bond flats. The third pusher is now believed to be in Ballymun.
On 23 February a meeting was held in the Utility Room, Shangan School, Ballymun. About thirty people turned up for the meeting. It was a progress report. A young man with red hair had read out a list of names of the pushers. The group had been formed for three weeks. Since they had formed one pusher had left the area and two had said they would 5::0p pushing. The young man read out the registration of a :2..U and a car that they had been watching up at the shopping centre. At a meeting two nights earlier in St Teresa's GEni'ellS he gave out the same registration numbers. The local committees were beginning to coordinate, to pass on the names of pushers and to know when one was moving into another area.
The young man with red hair also reported how he had gone to the house of a woman living in the area. He had asked her for heroin.
"I haven't got any at the moment," said the woman.
"I'm desperate," said the young man.
"If you hang on for a while my son will be back," she said. "He's gone into town to get some."
The woman they marched on that night had come from Hardwicke Street flats to Ballymun. Hardwicke Street flats in the north city centre area of Dublin is a very difficult place to push heroin.
In the late summer of 1983 a group from the flats had decided to get the pushers out of Hardwicke Street. Among them was Christy Burke, a full time community worker for Sinn Fein, and the party's local election candidate. The people of Hsrdwicke Street believe that the flats have been clean since they got rid of Bugsy and Maggot, as the two main pushers in the area are known.
"Quick, quick - it's that car again." The family on the top landing of a block in Hardwicke Street flats emptied quickly onto the balcony. Most people in the flats knew the sound of the car well. It had no exhaust pipe and it always roared into the complex. They suspected the occupants were pushing heroin in the flats. They weren't sure, but they were watching it.
Every night a group of men meet in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary in Hardwicke Street and patrol the area. They have been patrolling for the past three weeks, disscouraging the pushers who would otherwise come and hang around the corners of the flats complex.
It is over six months since the local drug groups began their activities in Dublin. Initially the pushers were almost bewildered by the way the communities had reacted to them. Some went quietly; some, in fear of total rejection from the people they lived with, agreed to stop pushing. However, intimidation of leaders of the community groups has just begun.
Last year a member of the committee was the first to be threatened and warned to stop his activities. Two men put a handgun to his head when they were delivering their message.
Earlier this month a member of the Tallaght Drug Commmittee received an anonymous phone call. The man at the other end of the phone said if he didn't stop his activities he'd be killed.
The pushers and dealers that remain are more resilient.
They've had time to think about how they should react to communities that have taken their own action, ignored the authorities, and launched a direct attack on them. There are signs that those who remain will not continue to react passively to the forces that are threatening the drug trade and their livelihood.
Just after midnight on Tuesday 21 February lac Flynn was shot in both legs with a hand gun. He had been standding talking to a neighbour on the top balcony of one of the flat complexes.
Joe Flynn had worked on the committee to get the pushers out of the Gardens. It is reported that the gunmen were looking for somebody else. His two assailants were not professional gunmen. They fired a total of seven shots and only two hit their victim. One of the gunmen also dropped the barrel of the gun in his haste to leave the scene. Gardai are convinced that the two men were emmployed by the Ma Baker group.
Six days later Francis Storey of Hardwicke Street flats was confronted by a masked gunman who shot two blanks into his legs from a sawn-off shotgun. Storey had been innvolved in community drugs patrols in the area for three months.
The intimidation of Francis Storey and the shooting of Joe Flynn are warnings to the community action groups. It is the first time that the drug pushers and dealers have hit back at those that are posing the biggest ever threat to their trade and their livelihood. It is unlikely to be the last.
One of Ma Baker's associates reports that recently she had information that she was going to be visited by a local group and be put out of her house. She was prepared, She had thirty men waiting in the area, all armed, all ready for action, according to her associate, According to the same source a number of other pushers are similarly prepared.