O’Shea calls for knife amnesty

THE “scourge of knife crime” must be eliminated, ­according to the chairman of Ennis’ Joint Policing Committee, who has renewed his call for a knife amnesty to be put in place in the county capital.

“Someone needs to start addressing this before people visiting The Gathering end up being a witness or victim to a stabbing,” stated Ennis Town Councillor Paul O’Shea. He was speaking in the wake of the tragic death of Polish national Piotr Nowakowski in Ennis last week.

The councillor commented, “Ennis is well known as being the friendliest town in Ireland, recent Garda HQ crime statistics cite Ennis as one of the safest towns in Ireland.

“However, the recent ­incident involving a fatality from a knife calls for immediate action to eliminate the scourge of knife crime. My sympathy to the family of the recent victim in Ennis.

“As a parent of teenage children and in my role as chairman of the Joint Policing Committee in Ennis, I am ­reiterating my call for ­prevention measures such as knife amnesty bins to be provided at public places where ­individuals can dispose of knifes without risk of prosecution. In addition to random searches on individuals by gardaí to detect concealed knifes.”

The councillor went on to state, “It is of serious concern that Ireland now suffers from Europe’s second highest per capita rate of knife killings and having Europe’s worst rate of knife-related crime. The current government have failed to grasp the seriousness of knife crime throughout the country. Recent studies carried out by the WHO and United Nations found that Ireland had experienced a surge in knife-related violence over the last 10 years. Stabbings appear to be a regular occurrence with most fatal stabbings involving a kitchen knife,” Councillor O’Shea said.

The councillor outlined that statistics show the majority of stab victims appear to be male with a high percentage of victims knowing their attacker.

Nearly half of all attackers are drunk or under the influence of drugs when they attack their victims.
The councillor called for a re-evaluation of the knife crime awareness campaign launched by the gardaí in 2009.

Councillor O’Shea concluded, “We need immediate intervention and serious investment in a national media awareness campaign highlighting the massive increase in fatalities of knife crime in Ireland.”