I got caught breaking the law! Yes, it is hard to admit (especially for a German :-) ), but I did break the law (unintentionally) and I got caught AND paid for it. A few weeks ago, I drove home on a very quiet Sunday evening on a well built and well lit street in Dublin. Hardly any traffic, no pedestrians or cyclists and I was not distracted by mobile phone or anything else. All was well…
…until about two weeks later when a letter arrived, telling me that I was recklessly breaking the law. What a bad boy! I know! I drove 59 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. I had to pay EUR 80 and will be punished for three years due to the 3 points I also got.
Interestingly, if I had driven 120km/h in a 50km/h zone, I would have been punished in the EXACT same way. Odd!!!
Then on Tuesday, I heard about the shooting of another gang member of the two feuding Dublin criminal gangs. We might think, that it is not the worst if they terminate each other, but keep in mind that in every killing one side will win over the other and it will give that “winning” side more power, which is never a good thing when you talk about criminals. These ongoing killings are a bad bad thing on another level. As we have seen, the risk for random bystanders is significant, because these killers seem to have trouble at times knowing who they really want to get and also because they are getting more and more ruthless.
So how does my speeding tickets link to the gang war in Dublin? — It doesn’t really! I am not the type of person who complains that the police should spend their time on hunting down the big criminals and let the small criminals go. I broke the law and got punished, which is annoying but fair. But when it comes to fairness, it seems that bigger criminals get away with a lot more.
For Friday of this week a big “clampdown” on speeding has been announced. It’s easy!! Put up a few vans around the country in locations that are not really accident hotspots and then just send the tickets by post. You will get lots of money back and have a nice Press Release about the success and the catching of the criminals.
At the same time, the gangs, make millions through drugs and from their HUGE amount of properties that most likely were bought from drug money as well. Clampdown? Not much!
Is it resources? I don’t think so! It is just easier to get honest people to own up and pay up for their small crimes than to get criminals to own up to their big crimes. It not wrong to punish the small time criminals, but it is wrong to let the big time criminals get away with as much as they do.
