People have a right to feel safe. How can we feel safe in a Luas carriage when it stops outside the Four Courts and a bevvy of the tracksuit bottom brigade hop on and immediately start giving each other high fives and sharing fist pumps just after avoiding a stretch in prison? Or you get on the Luas at the Red Cow and suddenly you feel you might not make the Point without somebody producing a knife (or worse)? It's not just Dublin either.
Our Gardaí are overstretched and fear official reprisals after doing their duty. Use too much force and suddenly there is a I-love-my-entitled-freedom brigade organising protests and petitions. Worse again we have good people feeling somehow obliged to support them. If one of our "deprived" boards a bus, Luas or whatever brandishing a syringe, a knife or any kind of weapon he/she intends using it. I don't see why we can tolerate this any longer.
We've reached a stage now where 100% zero tolerance is the only answer. It may not come to any great extent from Safety Wardens, but we have to start somewhere.
