The busy police chief of Galway Division has always been a man in a hurry, but he is not going to break a habit of a lifetime now on the cusp of retirement.
Chief Superintendent Gerard Roche finishes an industrious policing career tomorrow, Friday, June 12, after 41 years as a member of An Garda Síochána.
Off the clock, he is rushing to make an early dinner date, then pints with colleagues in his last week at work. “And if you want to interview me after that, next week, then you’ll have to find me, on a boat, somewhere in the Mediterranean. Good luck!”
Gerry Roche has served 24 years in the Garda western region. In their June plenary meeting on Monday this week, Galway city councillors were united in their praise of the man who became Galway’s top cop in 2022, but who has served in the county at many levels previously.
Veteran journalists across the country hold him in high regard as a senior lawman who illuminated the sometimes opaque world of policing. Health professionals and volunteers in the community sector credit him with backing impactful, multi-agency projects.
He has often been associated with resisting heroin and crack cocaine sellers infiltrating Galway city – and the concomitant social ills these hard drugs bring. “Once crack gets in [to a region] it’s nearly impossible to get it out,” Roche warns.
He has also overseen integrating new thinking on mental health into modern policing for the western region, and rapid advances of the technological and scientific sides of contemporary crime fighting.
“No. I can’t take that praise for all that,” he says, modestly, adding that his role as senior garda for the city and county involves constant interaction with other bodies, including the HSE and Galway’s two local authorities – especially their chief executives. “The teams here have done huge work, but yes: my priority over the last three and half years – in this position – has been the impact of drugs in Galway.”
The Divisional Drug Squad had one sergeant and five gardaí when Roche arrived in divisional HQ in Murrough. On his departure, it now boasts two sergeants, and 20 gardaí.
Since 2022, he has been in charge of 47 Galway Garda barracks, staffed by more than 600 gardaí and 100 civilians, serving almost 300,000 residents of the Galway divisional area, plus its 2.4 million annual domestic and foreign tourists.
He hails from Kylemore, in the Abbey area of Co Galway, between Loughrea and Portumna. He joined An Garda Síochána in 1984 “Because it was a good job – although I left a good job in a factory in Loughrea – and there wasn’t much going on in 1980s, recession Ireland… but mostly because I like dealing with people,” he says.
Initially assigned to the Dublin Metropolitan Division, he served in Donnybrook, Stepaside and Dundrum, and worked as a detective there until the mid 1990s. He remembers the infamous PIRA kidnapping of supermarket magnate Don Tidey, in which a garda and a soldier were killed, when hundreds of guards were assigned to comb a 300-square-mile area of County Leitrim, resulting in a chaotic gunfight.
Roche’s claim to fame as a detective is interviewing Martin ‘The General’ Cahill, the Dublin crime boss assassinated in 1994, and later played by both Brendan Gleeson and Kevin Spacey in Hollywood movies.
His thoughts on policing in Dublin, and later as a Chief Superintendent in Limerick, from 2018 to 2022, is that poverty is a cause of much urban crime, but that drugs in particular influence the most serious end of the spectrum such as arson, assault, intimidation, robbery, burgalry, and murder.
He worked as a sergeant in Galway city and Gort, detective inspector in Salthill, and superintendent in Ballinasloe. Outside Galway, Roche was Inspector in Sligo, and Chief Superintendent in Kildare and Limerick.
Murder in Galway
Roche might be forgiven for forgetting minor details over a long career, but the victims of serious crimes, especially murder cases, in which he was involved, stay with him.
The rape and murder of 17-year-old Siobhán Hynes on Tismeaín beach near Leitir Mór, in 1998. The violent assault and murder of 17-year-old Swiss student, Manuela Riedo, in 2007 in Galway city, and soon after, the strangulation of 19-year-old carer, Nicola Vonkova, in a drain behind a white-painted cottage, in Indreabhán, in 2008. Twenty-year-old Kieran Cunningham, stabbed to death without warning outside Hanley & Co on Williamsgate Street in the city centre, in 2009. The torture and manslaughter of publican and schoolteacher, John Kenny, in a toilet cubicle, in Oughterard, in 2011.
His method of recalling names, by – literally – placing their bodies, speaks to the impact these violent deaths have on those who investigate them. Perpetrators may fade, but Roche says he remembers all victims of serious crime, and many others killed or badly injured in serious accidents.
“All I ever want is justice for the families,” says Roche, matter-of-factly, referencing Galway’s two recent homicides, of 65-year-old Milena Ostojic, in Ballybrit, last year, and 31-year-old Masuma Sohrabi, in Clifden, just last month.
He says policing is completely different now to the “beats and patrols, searches and applying for warrants” of his early career, with cyber security, DNA, digital CCTV, new scientific methods and multi-agency liaison now integral: “There’s just no comparison.” He says that policing is now “European – we have all these European resources” and that each Garda division is now linked in with local authorities and the HSE.
The views from Chief Superintendent Roche’s office in divisional HQ, looking out over Galway Bay, are reputedly epic. What will the letter he leaves in an envelope on his desk for his successor advise as they take in the panorama?
“That Galway is a good place. It’s in great shape, and it must be kept in good shape.”
Bon voyage, Chief Roche.
