End Game

I remember sitting home last year watching a rugby international and trying to get The Bean interested in it. Ireland were playing Canada in Thomond Park. Keith Earls scored a fine try the first time he got his hands on the ball in his first international. Outstanding stuff. Ireland trounced them in effective, if not rather an ugly fashion. Of course, The Bean was coming up on eighteen months old. Try as I might there were mega-blocks to be chewed, walls to be crayoned and many, many things to be thrown into the toilet. There just wasn’t the time for rugby in his busy evening which came to an end shortly after with bath, a visit to the tooth brush and an attentive tucking in.

In his cosy world he has no concept of the other thing that happened that night. Later, as he slept safe and sound in his warm bed.

A man. A short chase. A gunshot. Darkness.

We all awoke to the news. We were horrified. Somewhere inside of us we probably knew that this was going to happen eventually. It was only a matter of time before someone got caught in the crossfire. As terrible as the thought may have been, we got on with our lives regardless all the same, on many levels not really giving a shit because all this was happening in another world we never ventured into. Well now this world had ventured into ours. As unwelcome as it was uninvited. Like it or not we had death and violence thrust onto our doorsteps by people who were now testing new boundaries. Like a child will see how close he can get to the fire before he is told definitively to stay away, or gets burned, Limerick’s underclass were now in new territory. Right on the hearth, waiting to see where the heat was going to come from.

I’ve said many times before that criminals, like politicians, like bankers and builders, will operate within the parameters they are allowed to by wider society. Bear this in mind as you read on.

Maybe I was being overly optimistic at the time, but it seemed like the national outrage at the time might have started ringing bells in higher up places. In places with the tools to take action and try to close these people down. But, as it turns out all we had was the same hot air from the same people meaning the same thing.

Nothing.

In proof of this point, yesterday I drove past the funeral of a man who was shot in the back because his brother testified against one of the people involved in Limerick’s drug wars. After Shane was murdered we were promised action. All we got was a slap in the face from the criminals to remind of our place and the fact that there will always be ways for them to get to us should we be brave enough to take a stand. Shane died in a case of mistaken identity. They thought he was one of them. Last week Roy Collins was deliberately targeted as an outsider. As an innocent man. He was deliberately killed so that you, me and all our kind will know not to get in the way of the drug dealing scumbags who have now shown in no uncertain terms that THEY run this city, and they, and only they will be the arbiters of who deserves to live and die on their streets.

We heard the usual shit from the usual people but I have no faith in them anymore. I ‘m sure they’ll do nothing just as they have done nothing to save us from economic collapse, job loses and failing health and education services. As we have been told to tighted our belts to save ourselves from bankruptcy and reposession we will be told to bolt our windows and doors to protect ourselves from the scum that they allow to run our streets.

I’ve gone beyond being angry about it, and I think that’s the wider problem. We have accepted it. This is now normal behaviour from the criminal fraternity. Innocent people who want to protect their families, neighbourhoods and business interests are now legitimate targets. The boundaries have been extended and now society’s delinquents have a new field to play in which we, the wider society, have opened up to them through collective inaction.

Shame on us all.