Agnieszka Chojnacka Puts Manners on The Gardaí and The DPP

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Monday December 06, 2010 05:03 by Seán Ryan

What have a young vegan lady, Shell to Sea and the students that got battered by the Riot squad, all got in common?

Throw Interpol into the mix and you've got a tale worth telling!

Aga tries to reason with Sergeant Tallon and Garda Kearns to no avail

A bit of history:

"Fergal Leddy received blows from a baton to the back of the head and shoulder. This happened during the ill-fated Reclaim The Streets protest in Dublin on May 6th 2002. Garda Paul Tallon was accused of being the garda who assaulted Fergal. Tallon’s first trial collapsed when the jury, after some 4 hours of deliberation, failed to reach a majority verdict – this was in 2004, more than 2 years after the assault on Mr Leddy. In 2005 Tallon was cleared by another jury of the Assault. He was 31 at the time. Tallon was one of a number of gardaí that day that earned notoriety with activists. Many gardaí had removed shoulder numbers, others were not in uniform and most of them disgraced themselves. Indymedia.ie made a name for itself as a very serious news organisation when pictures, videos and accounts began to appear.

When the Garda Complaints Board began to investigate its own thugs, witnesses were given a follow up visit by garda friends of the gardaí allegedly being investigated. This particular disgrace was later cited as being one of the reasons for the formation of the paint job, known as the “Garda Ombudsman.”

Interestingly too, Tallon’s current superintendent is none other than Joe Gannon. Gannon disgraced himself spectacularly in Mayo when he allowed heavy machinery to be driven onto private property and through a large group of protesters. Gannon was in charge of the garda thugs sent to Mayo to beat the rights out of Shell To Sea. For his gallant actions, including the re-writing of Irish law, where the power of arrest was removed from the Public Order Act, Gannon was put in charge in Pearse St. Garda Station upon his return to Dublin."

Where this story kicks off:

"On Saturday, August 29th of 2009, A-Liberation held their weekly protest outside Barnados Furriers on Lower Grafton Street in Dublin. The vegan activists had known Tallon for some time at this point and he was currently hanging around behind the protesters with Garda Kearns. Being well used to garda attempts to fit them up, the activists had taken to using video cameras and voice recorders to ensure that garda lies would be exposed in any court case brought against them.

Edmund Long, a veteran campaigner, had spotted Tallon in the reflection of the shop window, acting suspiciously, and shortly afterwards he filmed him and Kearns chatting with a homeless gentleman and sharing a laugh. The Sergeant later testified, on both occasions, that he’d taken no complaints prior to approaching Ed and the group.

The shop began to close up. The shutter over the main entrance opened briefly to admit the homeless gentleman, they must have spotted him on their own video equipment from inside the shop. As the homeless gentleman emerged from the shop, he thrust his crotch forward and grabbed his neck in a mocking and insulting gesture towards the activists. He ignored the fact that Ms Bartolome was filming him, he passed her by and made his way over to Mr Long who was also filming him. He slapped Mr Long’s camera, turning it off and started to give out to the activist, demanding not to be filmed and other incoherent nonsense. After a short while the homeless gentleman was pulled away by a friend of his. A few seconds after this, Tallon arrived in front of Ed and began to accuse him of violating the homeless man’s constitutional rights. Ed just stared at Tallon and said nothing."

Read the whole thing here: http://roaringandshouting.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/agni...-dpp/