Identifying John Cunningham (69), Christy Kinahan (64) and George Mitchell (70), the officer says they have supplied large parts of the Irish drugs trade from continental Europe or the Middle East, exerting great influence on younger charges in the State.įreed from jail just over 20 years ago, Kinahan went to Spain and set about supplying wholesale to a number of countries, including Ireland. The next drugs boom is already under way, says a senior Garda officer involved in gangland crime investigations – one that will be heavily controlled by a relatively small number of veteran criminals who have fled the Republic. Last year there were 23,240 recorded drug crimes – a figure only beaten by the 2008 high. After the 2008 crash it fell away, before rebounding since 2015. In 1996 the Garda recorded 3,953 drugs offences. In the decade that followed the number jumped to over 20 annually. In 1996, the year Guerin was killed, there were eight. In the 1990s there were usually a handful of gangland murders each year, though not all of them were shootings. Because they were young and immature, and many were addicts themselves, guns were used to settle even minor disputes, starting murderous feuds.Įvery shred of evidence since then tells the same story the drugs trade is driven by prosperity, not poverty, and is populated by young men on the ground who are far more violent than the older criminals of the 1980s and 1990s.

Some made more progress in five years than John Gilligan had in 25 years of crime. “Cocaine was the big one, it was everywhere,” he recalls, adding that within five or six years after Guerin’s murder the drugs trade in parts of Dublin and Limerick was ruled by men in their early to mid-20s. So many criminals were needed that young teenagers bypassed traditional routes into criminality – street crime and burglaries – and instead moved straight into holding, transporting and selling drugs. The first “explosion” in the drugs trade came in the early 2000s when the State was “awash” with Celtic Tiger money, ushering in a new underworld that has endured, and will thrive again with gusto once the Covid-19 pandemic passes. His conversation is peppered with the names of now-dead gangland criminals, Eamon Dunne (34), Shane Coates (34), brothers Stephen (27) and Bernard Sugg (23), brothers Andrew (30) and Mark Glennon (32) and Marlo Hyland (36). There was body alright a poor unfortunate with four holes in his head,” he goes on, the third gangland murder Blanchardstown-based officers had seen in 10 days. “I told them ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to leave, gentlemen’. McDowell was 'tut, tut', I think he must have thought it was some kind of set-up,' says Sherry. 'I was halfway way through my (presentation) and next thing there's a door knock: 'Brian, you're required in Finglas, a body has been found'. And so he wrote a report about it for his superiors, expressing his views.īut when the then Garda commissioner Noel Conroy and minister for justice Michael McDowell called to Blanchardstown one day in 2005, Sherry was pushed forward to brief them about local successes against the criminals. The redeployment caused resentment in “the K”, especially since Limerick’s murder rate was lower than what they were dealing with. “At the time they were sending an enormous amount of guards from Dublin down to Limerick even though we were being flogged to death up in the K,” Sherry says of the years he spent in Blanchardstown between 20. When 'The K' erupted in gangland feuding in the early 2000s – just like Limerick and several parts of Dublin – Sherry and his colleagues were under immense pressure as his division lost officers redeployed to Limerick. During five years of mayhem in 'K District', across north and west Dublin, he saw more violent death than he had in his previous service. Sherry was a detective inspector in Blanchardstown, Dublin, when gangland killings first escalated. The film stars Ryan Eigenmann, Jason Salcedo, Junell Hernando and Justin Simoy.Modern gangland crime in the State is a world that journalist Veronica Guerin, who was murdered 25 years ago on Saturday, would not recognise, says former detective Brian Sherry, who saw its birth during a 30-year career.

Gangland is a 1998 Philippine action gangster film directed by Peque Gallaga and Lore Reyes.

Gangland movie musical