Paul Williams on juvenile joyriders and the justice crisis

0:00The Mario Rosenstock podcast. Thanks to home. Finance made easy when you shop tech, electrical, appliances, kitchens and much more. Flexify Europe Limited trading as home is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Coming up on this episode of the Mario Rosenstock podcast. Somebody put up a post somewhere on social media talking about this angel going to heaven. This angel who's going to heaven has been involved in terrorizing people for years now since he was about 12, right? and now he's dead in a horrific crash the likes of which we have never seen before on our roads and the people piled on and said who the fuck do you people think you are?

0:40And they're right.

0:51The horrific crash on the M9 involving a car carrying a group of teenage joyriders travelling the wrong way down the motorway has provoked an extraordinary public reaction from the media and from just ordinary everyday people themselves. Crime journalist Paul Williams, special correspondent with The Irish Independent, says that in all his years covering crime, he can scarcely remember a story generating this particular level of anger. And it's thrown a much wider spotlight on juvenile crime, repeat offenders, and whether the state and our criminal justice system are actually equipped to deal with them in the first place.

1:25So I asked Paul to come in at short notice and talk me through the story and the public reaction. Who these young offenders are, why they appear to feel untouchable, the role of social media and what can realistically be done about it. We also get into Garda resources and pursuit training, deterrence, rehabilitation, and Paul's argument that Ireland needs a juvenile justice system that is actually fit for purpose. And it's fair to say that Paul does not mince his words. I have never seen such a universal rage amongst the public where there is zero sympathy. That's why the woke dopes who like to get their spake in have remained stunningly silent on all of this.

2:09Nobody has tried to offer an alternative narrative to this because you can't. It speaks for itself. We are at our most reckless when we're kids. When I was 17, I got drunk one night down in Leitrim and stole my mother's car and then drove with all my mates in it and crashed it at about 100 miles an hour. I was drunk. I was an extremely wild young fella. And I was extremely stupid. They're astonished that when they look now at the squad car driving by them that they realise that the vast majority of young cops driving these squad cars are not qualified enough to even switch on the sirens and the blue lights.

2:49like that's something for gift grub if I ever hurt it in my life My full chat with crime journalist Paul Williams is coming up in just a couple of minutes time but first students all over Ireland are getting their Leaving Cert results today and all throughout the next week they will be hoping to receive offers from the CAO which come out next week and David McWilliams as always has a unique economic take on it which should be fascinating to hear on the David McWilliams podcast. Ready to go, David. Ready to rock and roll, John. So a Leaving Cert was a little special today. Ah, yeah, Leaving Cert.

3:26And cue David. How you doing there? It's David here with John. How you doing? As always. And the Leaving Cert is upon us, John. The Leaving Cert results. God, I remember. Oh, I know. I was petrified myself. But of course, the Leaving Cert delivers one of the most educated workforces in Europe. In turn, attracting valuable multinationals which contribute to GDP and we're the envy of Europe when it comes to our secondary education, John. It is an incredible success story. Remember Levy's search results, John? Oh, I just about remember you. I remember them as very well. Oh, I was very nervous, I remember.

4:00Were you? I remember I had a couple of Jack Daniels and Cokes in the Queens to straighten me out before heading up the... What are you talking about, David? What are you talking about? I always hated school, John. I know, but... Black Rock College was like a barstool back then. It was literally the school of hard knocks, John. Exclusive private schools in the country. The putters told me they had nothing going for me. I'd amount to nothing. They used to letter me around the place. One fella used to headbutt me into the ditch. Ah, don't be absolutely... I'm gone for economics and trinity on the CAO.

4:31For the crack. What? What happened? Well, I had such a wayward childhood, burning up houses and stuff on the main streets of donkey. What? I knew I'd be spending the best years of me life. In the clink. In the joy. That's where I was ending up, yeah. David, you ended up in Trinity doing economics. I went up to the school to pick up the results. I was on the verge of a blackout from the amount of booze I had. David, David. I was still just about conscious enough to start smashing the fucking place up. Ah, listen. Two chairs out the windows, smashed a blackboard over a teacher's head, put him into St.

5:03James' for three weeks, then Petri-bombed the fucking staff room. Finally went up to get the results, and as expected, fuck all points. Official A life of crime Lay ahead of me You got maximum points And went on to become A professor of bloody economics I ended up living out Of a cardboard box On Collidey Hill What? Tapping up downtrodden locals Like Bono And Enya For a few bob To get a hit In a hostel for the night What a waste of a Fucking life I had You're an internationally Renowned economist Well I need a voice For the Labour Search students Make the most Of your bleeding life Look what happened to me and don't start snorting glue like I did.

5:44Glue. And we have new and exclusive comedy sketches on this show every week. That means we have hundreds of sketches that you may not have heard. So why not jump back a few months or even years and check out some of the bits you'll find nice and early in every single episode. And if you enjoy what you hear, do us a favour and tell a friend about this show. Just one other person. Even better, send them the link to the episode so they can have a laugh with a simple click. Before we get into the show, a quick word of thanks to HUM proud sponsors of the Mario Rosenstock podcast HUM is all about giving you a bit more flexibility in life when you're buying things you need or the things you simply want their flexible payment solutions let you spread your cost of your purchases into smaller manageable payments rather than having to pay for everything in one big lump sum they've got over 30 years experience globally and they work with a range of retailers here in Ireland a huge range it's helping customers make everything from those bigger once in a while purchases to the smaller things that make life that bit nicer.

6:44And of course, they're helping us too. Hum's support means we can keep bringing you the Mario Rosenstock podcast with the interviews, the characters and the comedy every week. So a big thank you to Hum for supporting the show. We're delighted to have them on board. Right, let's get into it and meet my special guest on this episode, Paul Williams, special correspondent at the Irish Independent. Paul has been writing a lot about these horrific joyriding incidents in recent weeks, and he started by telling me about the unprecedented level of reader reaction to the coverage. I have to say, like in the Irish Independent where I work, since they started gauging and measuring audience engagement with stories online, this story has broken all records.

7:23I have never seen in the past number of days such a public reaction to a story. I can't remember it happening like this before. you had one of the dead kids the parents put up or the family put up a thing on RIP.ie it had to be taken down because there was an overwhelming response from the public negative very negative clearly but that will tell you that's the way engaging public sentiment on this the public are absolutely enraged and what it has done is okay it has focused minds on a really critical crisis in our criminal justice system. And that is that a cohort, now a significantly small minority of feral, out-of-control kids with clearly no parental control or any kind of functional background have been running riot for years now.

8:27Stealing cars, targeting areas, marauding into people's estates, It's smashing in, terrorizing families, breaking into our houses, taking the keys to their cars, taking their cars, driving like absolute lunatics and this tactic of driving down the wrong way, down motorways, because they know the guards can't follow them. And what it illustrates is this, it has illustrated this massive gap in our protection of our society. Yes. Like, it's got to a stage now where people are openly talking about, Jesus, I don't think I'll, I have to go to the airport early. I think I won't go on the motorway. I absolutely agree.

9:04Look, Paul, I sent a text to my wife and I said, just be careful on the motorway. She said, why? Just people driving up the wrong. And I said to her, I followed her and I said, okay, in fairness, it all happens, it usually happens late at night or early in the morning kind of thing. At the time you feel you're most safe. Yeah. Your safest. I suppose. Supposedly. Yeah, on the road. Yeah. But the fact that I texted her, I would never have texted her about something like that. It was just, it was the sheer innocence of the people that were hurt on their way to England, to the airport, with their bags.

9:40Absolutely. And as we speak, they are all critically ill in hospital. And God bless them, I hope they live. I saw one, you know, I don't do this, you know, impartial bullshit when it comes to stuff like this. One, somebody put up a post somewhere on social media talking about this angel going to heaven. Mm-hmm. This angel who's going to heaven has been involved in terrorizing people for years now, since he was about 12, right? And now he's dead in a horrific crash, the likes of which we have never seen before on our roads. And the people piled on and said, who the fuck do you people think you are?

10:19And they're right, because you know what? We've got so woke and so cuddly, and let's blame. I'm waiting for the first woke dope to come publicly and say, oh, these poor children were let down by the state. They were let down by this. They were let down by, because everybody blames the state and the government. But like eight kids in a car the previous week, exactly a week earlier on Sunday morning, not far from where I live in Fairhouse. You know, eight of them. One is 13 years of age. You know, where's mommy and daddy? And this mill into this other. What would you call this? A pillar of community, a young 22-year-old lad who has worked hard, works hard, has a normal life, works hard to be normal and a functional member of society.

11:04And they destroy his life, just milling into him. And then they realize, the public have realized as a consequence of this, okay, it is focus attention on social media, which is a driver. And it's the dark side of social media. We've always talked about that. You know, the sewers of social media. You know, you have a very positive side to it, but then you have an exceptionally negative and malign and malignant side to it. But that is that apart from that, what it has astonished people mostly is that, you know, I've written a piece about this in the Irish Independent today. you know these are people that come up and talk to me about it and say you know they're astonished that when they look now at the squad car driving by them that they realise that the vast majority of young cops driving these squad cars are not qualified enough to even switch on the alarm switch on the sirens and the blue lights like that's something for gift grub if I ever hurt it in my life do you know what I mean so you know it's the bigger bigger bigger picture is that you know You've heard of the social contract theory and Thomas Hobbes and the whole concept of the collective giving up a collective degree of their liberty and their freedoms so that society can function as a cohesive unit.

12:24As part of that, police, the concept of police was invented to protect the people within the social contract, which is all of us. Protect the society, maintain law and order. Whenever, you know, the public perceive, either rightly or wrongly, and I'd say a lot of the time perhaps correctly, that, you know, that the state is not able to take these people on or is perceived not to be able to take these people on or are perceived to not have the resources or the training or the capabilities to prevent certain crimes and maintain law and order, then that breaks the social contract. You hear a lot of bullshit from lefties, you know, extreme left socialists talking about, oh, the social contract is broken and politicians like to use it because somebody mentioned Thomas Hobbes once in them and they read the piece on the back of the Huitabex box.

13:18But that is an example, a clear example of a breach. And that's why government and the state must do something about it. Yeah. I know that's the bigger, bigger. Let's talk about that in a minute. What do we know about this? Is it a gang or is it just a loose collection of? They're a loose collection of... When they say loose, are they connected with each other? These guys are all connected to each other, but they are part of, I think what Garda are calling and my colleagues in the Independent and other journalists are calling the Lucky Dip Gang. Now, I've only, I've never had much interest in them, just more juvenile crime.

13:49I was covering this stuff, you know, guys killing people on the roads 25 years ago. And this Lucky Dip Gang, I suppose they were calling, the police dubbed them that because they would just go into an area, pick an area on Google Maps, saturate it, six, seven, eight of them, break into houses, get keys of cars, steal cars, rob whatever they could find in the houses, and then go jousting with the police. And then, as well as that, filming themselves and live stream it on social media. Now, these guys, these five kids, there's a really good piece in Today's Irish Independent about it by Robin Schiller and Ken Foy, which really puts it in perspective.

14:29And these young lads, all of them, were in and out of custody and in and out of being arrested on a regular basis. Like they were, a number of them were involved in an incident not long ago, about a month or so ago, where they'd stolen this big Jeep. And I think it's gone viral on social media. And they drove across an innocent man on a bicycle and caused what we call life changing injuries. but we don't think about that because we hear life changing injuries but that some poor guy out there was minding his own business on a pavement in Carlow in the middle of the day and these guys tried to get in a big 4x400 drive across him.

15:09So they have been like the young lad the young lad whose name is Camille Pushkowski like he's 17 and the guys in the Indore have written this his whole life story so far and he's notorious and he was on practically all of them have been arrested for similar offences stealing been carried in stolen cars all part of this chaotic syndrome that we're now witnessing and they're arrested right before the courts and released on bail there is no system to control them there is no place to hold them and that when a certain cohort in society believes that they're totally untouchable and do what they like that's a recipe for disaster and that disaster the cumulative effect of all of that was the other morning on the M9 motorway Exactly now I suppose they feel that they're untouchable right so I suppose you tell me do they feel they're untouchable because of their age and the fact that they won't be incarcerated and the fact that there's nobody to hold them and do they also feel untouchable because this so-called driving up the wrong way business they know the guards which I only found out this morning, obviously, the guards, but it makes sense, it's self-explanatory, can't follow them.

16:29But for all of those reasons. So for all of those reasons. That's very dangerous, by the way. It's very dangerous in this society. Then again, somebody has to ask the question, who are their parents? Where did they live before? One of them I read briefly, again, my colleagues wrote that, you know, one of them had been in and out of care. So that's a dysfunctional background. But this is in a sense like, do you remember, I'm a fan of like World War II documentaries. Right? Me too. Yeah, and like people would be familiar with the Pacific and with kamikazes. Yeah. And kamikaze is basically one Japanese fighter pilot in a plane who like Stuka style dives into an American aircraft carrier or a destroyer and destroys everybody on board, kills everybody on board.

17:17So this is in a sense like a kamikaze mission where you're just, you're taking out members of the public with this machine that can travel at 150 miles an hour. This is a BMW, wasn't it? That they paid a thousand euro for. Which apparently somebody else had paid a thousand euro for, right? Yeah. On their behalf or that somebody had bought it and these guys were driving it. But did they not steal it then? No, it was originally believed that it was a stolen car but it's not a stolen car. It was bought by the thousand euro perhaps by these lads or somebody representing them. Right. Okay. But the kamikaze part about it, Like the tragedy of this, the really appalling tragedy of this is that, you know, they don't have any appreciation for any kind of consequences.

18:02The only consequences are being critically injured or killed. Like, let's just talk about the accident for a second. Yeah. You know, I'm like you sitting at home watching all of this unfold and reading the words and reading between the lines and the reports that our colleagues are filing. Yeah. Because we are, you know, we don't go into the graphic, gory, grotesque details. But when you hear that the emergency services were at the scene of this impact for, it seemed like a good few hours before, and the wording was before they could assess. in other words the injuries were of a level that were just off the Richter scale but then that they discover after several hours maybe as many as 10 hours as they're lifting the car or whatever they discover there's another body there like that's you know when I heard that I said my God because what a way to die what a way to go however having said that going back to what we talked about at the beginning I have never in all the years I've been doing this job and all the years, you know, just gauging public opinion I've seen such a absolutely universal rage amongst the public where there is zero sympathy that's why I said to you earlier that the woke dopes who like to get their spake in have remained stunningly silent on all of this.

19:40Nobody has tried to offer an alternative narrative to this because you can't. It speaks for itself. What about their own personal safety, these boys? I mean, what are we supposed to presume? I mean, they're presuming that they're doing it. We're hearing that they're doing it for the kicks and the likes and the streaming of the same so that they can show off and they can be, you know, they can gain clout and kudos in this social online situation. But what about their own personal safety? I mean, surely, even though they're 13 or 15 or 17, they have the cognitive ability to understand that their lives are in grave danger going up the wrong way on a motorway.

20:21Do they not kind of go, I don't want to die? I think that... No, but we are at our most reckless when we're kids. Like I did. My wife reminded me of this recently. When I was 17, I got drunk one night down in Leitrim and stole my mother's car and then drove it all my mates in it and crashed it at about 100 miles an hour did you? yeah and I do that part of me says you know and I'm trying to understand what happened here like I was drunk I was extremely wild young fella and I was extremely stupid and I did that to my mother's car nearly killed myself and my mates but the point about it is that a lot of us the most dangerous time in our lives I think is from the can I just be can I just be devil's advocate for a second I know two boys right two lads who are now my age because when we were in college first year they took their dad's car and they drove it at 130 miles an hour down the motorway right the wrong way no not the wrong way and I suppose what I'm saying is I'm just being devil's advocate here they were building in even though they were 19 or whatever they were building in a calculated risk.

21:38As in, we're driving the right way. We're just being assholes. But they're driving the right way. I'm saying, when you're driving the wrong way, this completely changes the nature of the dynamic completely. You are very possibly likely to get life-changing injuries or die driving at over 100 miles an hour against the traffic. So that's what... But obviously that happens, so that's all... But you see, I saw the difference where we call that in criminology primary deviance. I didn't do it again. I learned my lesson pretty quickly and I was embarrassed and ashamed and my father nearly killed me. And the guards dealt with me as well at the time.

22:19And, you know, your mates probably paid a price for doing what they did. These young fellas have done it many, many times. Yeah. And it's that recklessness and it's that dysfunctionality as well, the combination of the dysfunctionality in their lives. and there's also a piece and one of the pieces I wrote in the end though this week was that you know like it's also perhaps you can add in a bit of ketamine or cocaine or whatever other pharmaceutical shit that kids are taking these days and you add that into the cocktail and it's a cocktail and then that gives you fearlessness yeah okay I want to ask you about this thing more about the social contract right like where do I start with this I'll cut in through the side door okay Okay.

23:02We're an incredibly rich country. Well, apparently somebody said that, but I don't think about that. It's categorical. Yeah. It's unequivocal. We are an incredibly rich country. If we really needed the money for another COVID or COVID on steroids. There's a big argument. There's a brilliant... COVID on steroids. We would find the money. You would find... Oh, yeah. The piece down the back of the couch. You'd find Micheál Martin. Obviously, the people need to be need to be reimbursed for looking at their computer for six months and doing nothing. We would pay them out. Right? So that would be found.

23:30You should ring Andy Burnham, by the way, as well. You'll probably get away with that, too. So, why can't we... Like, this is really, really serious now. The personal life safety of normal people just going about their business. So, what's wrong here, Paul? Why aren't... Am I right in saying that there's not enough Gardaí? Or not enough trained Gardaí? There's not enough trained Gardaí. There's no Garda Pursuit, for example, in this. But then again, even if you had the best trained pit manoeuvre cops in the world, in the Gardaí, they still would have to think twice before they hit down a motorway after a car.

24:13Right, let's skip that then. Understood. So what do we need? Do we need more deterrence? Is deterrence, I think? Well, first of all, we need... If deterrence is the answer, what is the deterrence? We need an infrastructure, a juvenile criminal justice infrastructure that's fit for purpose. How does that work? Good. You build, like if we have any value in our young people, we need to build, it needs to, we need to create the space. We need to build an institution or institutions that are big enough and designed to hold these kids if they're detained. But that within that, there is a very vigorous and robust system of rehabilitation and counselling.

24:58You know, there is none of that going on and has never gone on. Remember the last time, this isn't new in that joyriding. When I came to Dublin first in 1987, Richard reaches pinnacle. I remember stories on the front page of the Evening Herald talking about the word something like at one stage in Dublin City. I'll never forget this because I wrote about it in one of my books afterwards when I was doing the history of organised crime and the development of crime in Ireland in 1987 at one stage at one stage in one particular week there was something like three or four squad cars left in Dublin the rest of them had been milled off the road by joyriders and what did the state do the state then opened up Spike Island you know to put the young delinquents onto Spike Island now then they all rebelled and burned the place down but for quite a while after that.

25:48And I'm not saying that's the approach we should take now. I think the approach would be rehabilitative and holistic as well. But that, you know, it died down. The whole problem of joyriding died down then. It's a perennial thing. In 2002, there were two guards in Stilorgan where two lads in a car came around in a stolen car that were trying to stop them. Again, coming down to Stilorgan, I think they might have been traveling the wrong side of that as well. but they milled into the squad car and killed two guards. Oh God. And, but they never showed, these young lads never showed any remorse because 10 years later, 15 years later, they're up in front of the courts again.

26:26But this is what we need to spend our money on. Yeah. You know, the social contract you talked about, which is, we exchange a bargain with leaders to offer us some collective safety. This is what needs to be done. I'm sorry, but I mean. Another thing, Another thing that people are stunned by about the level of training police are getting in this country. The fact is that up until Sunday, the Guard of Representative Association, the Association of Guard of Sergeants and Inspectors, and everybody I've ever talked to in the guards was saying, We really need to start training our people to a high level in terms of pursuit training, pursuit driving, but also interceptors, all of that kind of stuff.

27:14And they're not done. And I'll tell you why they wasn't done. And I've been asking this question for the past few days because we've been writing about it extensively in the end, though. Is that a lot of people, the management culture in Angarda Shikana was risk averse. We don't want to cause any trouble. We don't want to be doing that. we had a commissioner here for seven years who was Leo Fradker brought in from the PSNI and Joe Harris and it didn't work. It didn't work for him or the police here. But he was going to modernize all of this and everything was going to be rosy in the garden. And over that seven, nearly eight years, nothing at all was done.

27:52All that was done was that we saw more and more, again, the public were astonished to see so many guards being suspended from their jobs and their lives being suspended in midair because they might have loaned a bicycle to a pensioner. You know, it's with the lines between logic and illogicality sort of blur. Yeah, okay. Like, okay, so we're just talking about these boys and we're talking about the social contract. And then that kind of comes on as well with the recurring theme of, you know, I can't walk down O 'Connell Street or I can't walk into Talbot Street at a certain time. And that part of the city is a kip and it's just crawling with needles and all this sort of stuff.

28:37And, you know, you're kind of going like, isn't this not sort of 101, basically, the basics of we need to kind of sort this out as a community, as a country. Bearing in mind, again, I would stress, we are loaded. like and let nobody ever forget that when history passes by and history will come and the future will come they will look back on this time and go how flush were we at this time it I mean the money needs to be spent I'm saying but it's all isn't that right or not it's going back to doesn't the money need to be spent Paul of course it does okay alright but like the Chicago School of Criminology was the major seminal report was done in 1926-28.

29:23It was a long study, a longitudinal study. And it studied the whole environment of how cities, the human ecology, the ecological landscape works. And basically, the first page of Lady Bird version is that rich people and you have nice rich areas and people move out of the areas and then they leave the certain scanger areas we dump everything there it's like it's like having a human dump and it's it's like you know I listen to some like it is a fact that the north inner city has the highest number of homeless people in the country and that's because they're being shipped in there and a lot of refugees and people seeing asylum seekers have been shipped in there and then because that's then it's completely skews and the organic sort of balance within those communities.