Drugs are “everywhere across Leitrim”

At a meeting of the County Leitrim Joint Policing Committee this week Cathaoirleach Cllr Justin Warnock noted that individuals selling drugs is “one of the biggest problems that's in our county and it's leading to an awful lot of anti-social behaviour.”
He was speaking in relation to a report by Chief Supt Aidan Glacken on crime figures in the Leitrim area that revealed possession of drugs for sale or supply offences went from 12 in 2022 to six in 2023.
“It's something I feel very strongly about and I'm listening to it from people on the ground that it's everywhere across Leitrim - every town and village; it's everywhere, so I would be slightly worried about that,” Cllr Warnock said.
Cllr Enda Stenson said he too was surprised at the “lower number of detection of drugs” as the issue “seems to be rampant everywhere and maybe the smaller detections aren't reported.”

Chief Superintendent Glacken told the Joint Policing Committee that in relation to drug crime in the county, there have been a number of notable detections with one in Mohill in May and another in Carrick-on-Shannon where €40,000 worth of drugs was uncovered in July.
Two individuals are due before the courts in relation to these incidents.
There was a second detection on the same day in Carrick-on-Shannon of over €10,000 and two individuals are due before the court in relation to that, he added.
In July, an individual was apprehended with cocaine and a substantial amount of cash in a car in Manorhamilton and a file is going to the DPP.
Chief Superintendent Glacken recalled how two years ago, the Sligo Leitrim Division launched Operation Dualgas - a local coastal strategic plan, which had a specific focus aimed at protecting and securing the division’s coastline and waterways from criminal activity.
He said, “That has been one of the tenets of our approach to tackling organised crime and tackling drugs.”
He noted that during the Summer, a person from Sligo has been convicted of directing a criminal organisation and it's “only the second time ever such as conviction has been recorded in this country and that is where we decided to target the upper echelon of people involved in the sale and supply of drugs,” e.g. importation, distribution, transportation, money laundering, assets seizures, etc.
He said that the conviction has a “substantial reach right across the north west of Ireland and also with international links into Spain” and the division have been putting a “very, very substantial amount of resources into that.”
The Chief Superintendent said while there is a slight reduction in figures for “certain detections, it's not always about quantity” and said the focus is on reducing “intimidation from drug sales supply or drugs debt” and people “who are controlling gangs of 20 people or more and involving innocent people.”
He said the use of cocaine has now become “a norm in society” and people are “willing to put a lethal weapon in their hands, like a car and drive it, and the impact of that is untellable and has huge ripple effects in communities where harm is done.”
He told the meeting that drug detection is not just about “finding people with drugs in their pockets” but about the “use of the roads, importation, distribution and intimidation.”
He said resources are targeted out “where we can reduce harm in the best possible way.”
In other figures reported to the JPC meeting, Chief Supt Glacken told members of the committee that two people were arrested and charged in relation to six burglaries and six thefts from cars that took place in July in the Kinlough/ Manorhamilton area.
He continued that the division's road policing unit took part in a road safety ‘Day of Action’ in the North Western Region which took place across Leitrim, Sligo and Donegal during which they conducted a number of high visibility check points and will “continue to do those over bank holiday weekends.”
He also said members of the division have held a number of cross border meetings with members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) with personnel who are working on “volume crime” and “other issues that rise in terms of our joint agency approach to tackling cross border crime.”