The violence that occurred in Coolock on Monday, and elsewhere on previous occasions, speaks to deep-seated issues in our society that go far beyond policing and the role of the Garda Siochana. Yet a great deal of the public conversation around these events has focused on how the gardai and the criminal justice system are to deal with anti-immigrant aggression. It is a truism, articulated over many decades by social scientists and criminologists, that the way the police operate is likely to be an accurate reflection of any society’s civic values and of the health of its democracy. The Garda…

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