Whenever there is some new controversy with An Garda Síochána I always think of the TV show The Wire. For those who haven’t watched it, The Wire is ostensibly a police drama set against the backdrop of the American “war on drugs”. But it is so much more than that. It holds a mirror up to American society and looks at the dysfunctions of a whole city (Baltimore) by examining the operations of criminal gangs, the police, trade unions, the political system, the education system and the media. There are not really any “good guys” or “bad guys”, only well developed characters operating within cultures that are fucked up; failing worlds where gangland murderers provide welfare for their communities and where even the police officers who are not corrupt or brutal cut corners and break the law in their pursuit of justice. It has been described as more comparable to a Dostoevsky novel than to any other TV police drama.

The Wire is all the more enjoyable because of its authenticity. It is an accurate portrayal of the darker aspects of a once-great American city. According to the shows creator, David Simon, “all the things that have been depicted in The Wire over the past five years – the crime, the corruption – actually happened in Baltimore. The storylines were stolen from real life”. The decline of industrial America, the devastation wrought by the “war on drugs”, the political corruption, the underfunded education system, the misery of life in ghettos – the realism of its captivating depiction of these real life problems has meant The Wire has been frequently anointed the greatest TV show ever made. One ongoing story-line throughout the five series of The Wire was the manner in which the Baltimore Police Department operated. Mediocrity and corruption, individual and systemic abuses of power, the evasion of responsibility, the overall departmental dysfunction; Baltimore Police Department had it all.

In Ireland, there have been plenty of reminders recently that it is not just American police departments that are dysfunctional. The latest incarnation of the ongoing series of Garda scandals was revealed last week; nearly one million of the breathalyser tests that Gardaí recorded over the past few years never actually took place. It is as yet to be determined how this occurred. When Assistant Commissioner Michael Finn was asked if Gardaí had been fabricating figures he answered “I don’t know. Certainly they weren’t recording them correctly”. Presumably Gardaí have targets and presumably it’s problematic for them if they don’t meet those targets. The trouble this can bring will be familiar to fans of The Wire.

“Juking the stats … Making robberies into larcenies. Making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and majors become colonels. I’ve been here before.”

Roland ‘Prezbo’ Pryzbylewski, The Wire – Season 4 Episode 9

In The Wire, the Baltimore police regularly conduct a statistics driven performance review (named Comstat in The Wire, but based on the real life Citistat in Baltimore). The show demonstrated that as policing became more statistics driven, there became more and more pressure on police officers to produce acceptable numbers in terms of crime enforcement and reduction. The result, as depicted in The Wire, was that politicians would put pressure on the police to produce statistics showing crime was down. The response was “juking the stats”; the tactic of misreporting crimes and twisting the numbers to paint a false picture of reduced crime whilst the actual quality of life in the community remained unchanged or worsened.

Studies have shown this style of police management in America did in fact result in the misreporting of crimes. But do An Garda Síochána “juke the stats”? To be blunt – yes, they do. In 2016, the CSO issued a report on Garda crime statistics. The report noted that 16% of crimes reported to the Gardaí were not recorded on Pulse, the Garda computer system. There was significant downgrading of serious crime such as assault and robbery “without justification” and 21% of invalidated incidents were invalidated without sufficient reason. Downgrading and non-reporting of crimes – this is “juking the stats”. Overall, it was claimed that Gardaí success rate at solving crime was 10% lower than Gardaí statistics indicated. It was not the first time Gardaí were identified as having serious difficulties with the accurate compilation of crime figures; in 2014 the Garda Inspectorate Report highlighted how as much as 30% of serious crimes went unrecorded in Garda statistics. Perhaps the most shocking example of the Gardaí “juking the stats” came in in May 2014 when Garda whistleblower Nick Keogh revealed that senior Gardaí were inflating crime statistics by convincing people to buy drugs and then sell them to undercover Gardaí, after which the drugs were seized and a crime recorded (this also occurred in The Wire). It is claimed that the Gardaí went to significant lengths to cover up evidence of these operations.

Clearly, An Garda Síochána as an organisation tolerates dishonesty when it comes to recording crime statistics. At the time of the CSO report and of the Garda Inspectorate report, the Minister of Justice Frances Fitzgerald and the Gardaí both identified technical issues as being the cause of the anomalies. But it is suspicious to say the least that where statistical anomalies do occur it is always to the effect of under-reporting crime, and over-reporting Gardaí activity. The one million extra breath tests recorded is a further example of this and the actions of the Gardaí do seem to indicate that this was a deliberate falsification. The issue was only identified because the Medical Bureau of Road Safety noticed that the number of tests recorded did not match the number of test kits issued but while the Gardaí were made aware of the discrepancy in 2014, the over-reporting continued until 2016. The Gardaí also kept the discrepancy secret from the Police Authority, the civilian oversight body for policing in Ireland. Finally, the Gardaí have been unable to offer any explanations for the one million fake tests – even though they have known about it for years. All of this indicates that “juking the stats” on breath tests was deliberately tolerated and probably encouraged.

Much of the discourse surrounding the latest scandals has centered on whether Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan should be removed. She may survive this scandal but the next scandal (and there will be more) may be one scandal too many for her. Should we expect improvements in the operations of the Gardaí when she is replaced? Perhaps The Wire contains the answer to this question. In Season Four, Baltimore elects an idealistic new Mayor who demands that Baltimore Police produce clean statistics. However, political expediency and the desire for electoral success ensures that eventually he too requires that the police “juke the stats”. The man who sets out to reform the system ultimately ends up with a vested interest in its perpetuation.

Both the Gardaí and Department of Justice have a vested interest in crime being under-recorded and Garda activity being exaggerated. This is the corporate culture of An Garda Síochána and it continues because it benefits those involved. Robberies become larcenies and majors become colonels. When it comes to promotional opportunities, the appearance of effective policing is just as good as actually doing it. We have seen what happens to members of the force who challenge this. Meanwhile, politicians can continue to claim success in the fight against crime and when scandals do emerge they can order an inquiry or fire a commissioner without ever changing the systemic failures that lead to the problems. Thus “juking the stats”, and other problems within the Gardaí, will continue. The Wire showed us how society produces criminals, that peoples actions are ultimately determined by the culture within which they operate. Similarly, it showed us that it wasn’t individuals in the police force who were dishonest per se. Rather it was the institution and its management culture that generated the dysfunctions that were then manifested in individual actions. In Ireland, as in The Wire, there appears to be little appetite to affect systemic change within An Garda Síochána.