A horrible day in Irish history, for many many reasons. I’m not going to go into the details, plenty of proper current affairs news outlets will discuss that. But one area I’m interested in is the impact smartphones is going to have in the fallout of the Dublin riots.
An Garda Siochana has today requested that members of the public contact Store Street Garda Station if they have any video footage from the Dublin riots.
In a post on Instagram, the Gardaí said they are “appealing to the public for video footage and content related to last Thursday’s serious public disorder in Dublin City Centre that will assist in our ongoing investigation”.
The post continues with details of how this will be done, saying you should “send your contact details to store.street.public@garda.ie” before adding they “would be very grateful if you could also help us by sharing this message with those you know”.
They also pointed out that you should not send footage yet, just make contact to say you have some form of digital content that may be of interest.
I reached out to the Garda Press Office for clarification on one point; would members of the public risk losing their personal devices in the event their footage be deemed of interest. This will not be the case. The Press Office confirmed that once you get in touch, “appropriate arrangements will then be made for downloading of the relevant footage only”. In addition, they stated that the “handing over of personal devices will not be required.”
This is an interesting development from Gardaí but not a massive departure from common practice. We often see requests for dashcam footage when a serious crime has been committed. Given the public outrage towards the riots and the quality of smartphone cameras today, it’ll be interesting to see what fruit this bears. This comes alongside fast-tracked plans to introduce body cams and the use of AI-powered facial recognition technology following the Dublin riot.
