More power to our gardai

LAST week my car was stolen in Dublin.

It was parked on a street in the south city for no more than 20 minutes and when I returned it was gone.

There was just an ominous gap among the other parked cars where it had been. And as anyone else who has had the misfortune of having a car stolen will understand, it is a very disconcerting feeling.

For a second you wonder if this is actually where you parked, while double-checking the parking zone signs to make sure the dreaded clampers haven’t taken it away.

As it slowly dawned on me that the car was definitely not where I had left it, I even wondered if someone was playing a joke.

But it was no joke. The car was gone. I rang the gardai in Kevin Street and they quickly confirmed that the clampers had not taken it away.

They told me I’d need to report it to my local Garda station. I got a taxi straight to Crumlin where a Garda behind the counter took my details.

Three hours later the gardai called to say they had my car and had arrested the culprit suspected of taking it.

I was amazed. I had given up the car as gone for good and assumed it was already burnt out in a field somewhere.

To be honest, it is a bit of a banger and the material cost wasn’t going to be much. However, it was my banger and the inconvenience of the loss was going to hit me hard.

But I got it back in one piece the following evening and I’m driving it again this week as if nothing had happened.

In this case it was a happy outcome but regardless of the result it made me realise what a great job the gardai are doing under enormous pressures.

Considering the fact that they are dealing with station closures across the country and a lack of resources that John Parker, GRA president, recently warned was causing a crisis in morale, my personal experience last week only raised my opinion of them to a new level.

In the grander scheme of things, my drama was a minor one compared to some situations victims of crime find themselves in. But that didn’t stop the gardai I dealt with from being unfailingly polite, reassuring and professional.

It was a reminder that the young men and women, some of them way younger than my 42 years, remain the impressive thin blue line between us and chaos that they have always been, despite the challenges.

And it struck me that this was an opportunity to thank them for the job they do and how well they do it.

They are a credit to the uniform. More power to them.