Cocaine Wars

by Mick McCaffrey

  Declan Gavin was questioned for all of Friday evening and Saturday. However, because he was not actually in the process of handling the drugs, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided that he should not be immediately charged, but that investigations should continue and a full file be forwarded for consideration in due course. On the Saturday evening, a disbelieving Declan Gavin was released from custody without charge. His two pals were not as lucky. On the Monday morning, seventeen-year-old Graham Whelan and nineteen-year-old Philip Griffiths appeared before Dublin District Court, where they were both charged with possession of drugs with intent to supply. The pair were given bail. Back in Crumlin the post-mortem immediately began over how the cops had found out that the drugs were being cut in the hotel room. Suspicion soon fell on Declan Gavin.

  The main person pointing the finger was Gavin’s friend and one of his main partners in crime, Brian Rattigan. Rattigan, a twenty-year-old from Cooley Road in Drimnagh, and other members of the gang could not believe that he had been freed without being charged, and the word soon spread that he was a Garda informant. There was no evidence to prove this and it wasn’t actually the case, but Gavin was labelled a tout [‘rat’ or ‘grass’] and he and Brian Rattigan fell out spectacularly, with the gang splitting in two amid serious recriminations.

  Rattigan wanted to be paid for the drugs that were seized, but Gavin put it down to an occupational hazard and laughed, declaring that he wouldn’t pay Rattigan a penny of his €35,000 investment. Gavin also accused Rattigan of having ‘touted’ to the police, and it was obvious that the two sides would not be able to reach any common ground. Both men were hotheaded and more than prepared to use violence and intimidation against any enemy, real or perceived. A dispute that had been building had now escalated, and it was obvious that there would inevitably be bloodshed before a truce was declared.

  The suspicions that Gavin was a ‘rat’ did not come out of thin air, and the fact was that he had a history of avoiding charges for the possession of large quantities of illegal drugs. On 14 August 1999, Gavin had fallen into a trap set up by the Garda National Drugs Unit (GNDU) at Ballymount Cross in Dublin 12. The GNDU operation, which was led by Detective Inspector Brian Sutton, Detective Sergeant Pat Walsh and Detective Sergeant Christy Mangan, was set up after intelligence was received that a large number of ecstasy tablets were being moved by criminals from Crumlin. Gardaí had been watching a white van from 6.00 a.m. that morning, when it picked up a number of cardboard boxes in Balbriggan from another car. In the early afternoon Gardaí stopped the van, which was being driven by twenty-six-year-old Donal Keenan, who was from Galtymore Close in Drimnagh. The thirty-year-old passenger, Thomas Delaney, was also from Galtymore Close. There were 100,000 ecstasy tablets, worth up to €1.5 million, wrapped in plastic bags and packed in cardboard boxes in the back of the van. The M50 motorway in Dublin was under construction at the time, and there was a large amount of traffic in the area after a major traffic jam had developed. Delaney and Keenan were cuffed and taken away by DS Pat Walsh, but DI Brian Sutton noticed that Delaney’s mobile phone had been ringing incessantly while the arrests had been taking place. Sutton answered the phone, and there was a man with a thick Dublin accent at the other end who asked, ‘Is everything OK?’ DI Sutton said that he was a member of Dublin Fire Brigade and there had been an accident involving a white van, and that the two occupants had been injured and were being rushed to Tallaght Hospital by ambulance. At that moment, an ambulance happened to go by the arrest scene with its sirens on. The man at the other end of the phone seemed very panicked and quickly hung up. Gardaí were sitting in an unmarked car waiting for the van to be towed away, when a man approached it, slid open the door and attempted to take the drugs. He was quickly arrested, and identification found in his wallet revealed him to be Declan Gavin. The GNDU officers didn’t know who he was and were not expecting him to be there. He had been shadowing the drugs van in a car to make sure that the delivery went smoothly, but had become separated in the heavy traffic. The car was being driven by a notorious drug dealer from the north inner city, Christopher ‘Bouncer’ Hutch, who had invested in the shipment. Hutch was not arrested. When Gavin lost sight of his friends, he rang the phone and thought that Brian Sutton was really from the Fire Brigade because he had heard the ambulance siren with his own ears. Thinking that his two friends were injured, he rushed up to the van to get the drugs before Gardaí came to investigate the supposed traffic accident. Again, he was caught red-handed, but the DPP decided that he should not be charged. Because he was not driving the van, was not a passenger in it and had not touched the drugs, there was not sufficient proof that they belonged to him. While Gavin appeared to have the number of lives normally associated with cats, his friends were, once again, not so fortunate.

  In January 2001, Thomas Delaney was jailed for seven years after being found guilty of having the ecstasy with intent for sale and supply. In court Delaney said he was paid just £300 for ferrying the drugs and that he ‘wasn’t the main man’ in the operation, but he refused to reveal Gavin’s name. Two days before he was due in court, Delaney answered a call to his door at 3.30 a.m. and was shot at point blank range. He was lucky to survive. Gardaí believe that people who had been involved in importing the seized ecstasy wanted him dead so he wouldn’t inform on them from the dock. The threat obviously worked, because Delaney wisely didn’t say a word against them. Donal Keenan pleaded guilty to the offence and he was jailed for five years.

  Declan Gavin was given the benefit of the doubt after the Ballymount arrest, but lightning doesn’t strike twice, and when he was released after the Holiday Inn, the consensus was that he was a Garda agent, which can be a fatal thing to be accused of. Just a few months after he was freed, the Gardaí did send a completed file to the DPP, and orders came back to charge him. He was subsequently brought before the courts, and a trial date was scheduled for October 2001. But the ‘tout’ label had stuck and there was no way that he and Rattigan could mend fences now.

  In February 2001, Graham Whelan, who lived in Clonard Road in Drimnagh, pleaded guilty to possession of the drugs found at the Holiday Inn. Judge Elizabeth Dunne heard that Whelan was seventeen-years-old at the time of the offence and was being influenced by older, more ruthless criminals. The mandatory sentence for possession of such a large quantity of drugs was ten years’ imprisonment. Sergeant Seamus Boland from Pearse Street gave evidence that Whelan had told detectives that he could ‘do ten years on his head’ and had failed to co-operate with them. Judge Dunne decided to waive the mandatory ten years because of Whelan’s young age and the fact that he had pleaded guilty. He was handed a six-year jail sentence, which would not start until October 2001 because Whelan was already serving a sentence for assault, which he had committed while out on bail after the Holiday Inn seizure.

  The previous week had seen Philip Griffiths, who was from Rafters Road in Drimnagh, appear before the same judge to face his punishment. Griffiths, who was then twenty, also pleaded guilty. Senior Counsel Barry White, who was defending, said that Griffiths was not in charge of the operation and only ranked number two of the three men involved (the main figure being Declan Gavin). Griffiths told Judge Dunne that he was awarded £15,500 in compensation from his job in 1998, and then left employment and lived off the award. He then began using cocaine and quickly became addicted. The money was soon spent, and he fell into debt with Gavin, who was supplying him with his drugs. He told the court: ‘When I ran out of money, he put it on the slate, and I was then approached by this person to bring drugs from one point to another as part payment for my debts and continuing addiction.’ Judge Dunne said that because of the legislation that required a mandatory ten-year term for quantities of drugs over £10,000, her hands were somewhat tied. She said she did not want to see Griffiths ‘sacrificed as a lesson to others’. Taking into account his age and the fact that he had weaned himself off drugs, the judge sentenced Griffiths to seven years in jail, and said she would re
view the sentence in October 2004, saying: ‘It makes me sad to see someone of his age come to court on such a serious matter.’ Local TD, the late Tony Gregory, lashed the sentence as being ‘crazy’ and too lenient, saying: ‘It’s hard to take these sentences seriously. There’s absolutely no consistency.’

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  Declan Gavin was born on 19 September 1980. He lived with his mother, Pauline, sister and brother, Aidan, on Mourne Road, Drimnagh. He was a single man and had no children. He was popular with women and always had plenty of female attention. He was unemployed and made money by selling vast quantities of illegal drugs. Despite the fact that he never had a job and never paid tax in his life, Gavin never had to sign on for unemployment assistance, because he was making so much money from dealing. Despite his youth, Declan Gavin was heavily involved in the large-scale sale and supply of heroin, cocaine and ecstasy in the Crumlin and Drimnagh area, and had built up a reputation with Gardaí across Dublin because of the sheer size of his burgeoning drug business. When he was in his teens, Gavin and some of his friends, including Brian Rattigan, began to realise the potential wealth that could be accumulated from drug importation.

  They managed to get in touch with members of the infamous drug gang led by John Gilligan. They worked out a deal where they received regular shipments of ecstasy and cocaine, effectively working as wholesalers for ‘Factory’ John’s gang. They received a commission, while the majority of the profit went back to Gilligan. The aspiring young drug dealers made a few quid for themselves but they were bringing drugs money back to Gilligan by the sackful – literally – and they were the ones who were taking all the risks. As they became more established, the Gilligan gang allowed them to go to Amsterdam and meet with the suppliers and organise the shipments of the drugs back to Ireland. It was a lot of risk for very little reward, and Brian Rattigan and Declan Gavin were getting sick of it. They were determined to cut out the middleman in order to make far bigger profits, and they got their chance after the Gilligan gang imploded.

  In the summer of 1996 John Gilligan arranged for the murder of crime journalist Veronica Guerin, and the government and Gardaí launched an unprecedented blitz on him and his cronies. A special Garda unit, under Detective Inspector Tony Hickey, was set up in Lucan Garda Station to investigate the murder, and many senior members were either jailed or fled the jurisdiction. The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) was also established, and began to forensically examine the assets of major crime figures and seize all assets that could not be explained or that were bought with the proceeds of crime. Gilligan and the majority of his gang were convicted of drug dealing on a massive scale, and the gang was effectively broken up overnight. The result was that a major vacuum developed in the distribution of drugs in and around Dublin’s south inner city, and a drugs drought occurred across the entire city. This resulted in a major increase in the number of robberies and burglaries on chemists and GP practices by desperate junkies needing to get high. Another initiative of the government and the Garda Commissioner in 1995 was perhaps more important than the establishment of CAB but is rarely mentioned. The Garda National Drugs Unit (GNDU) was set up under the leadership of experienced Chief Superintendent Kevin Carty, and its aim was to dismantle organised drugs networks involved in large-scale importation and distribution. The GNDU also investigates international drug importation and co-operates with international agencies to ensure that intelligence is shared. Over the years, the fifty or so GNDU detectives would seize tens of millions of euro worth of drugs that led to dozens of successful prosecutions.

  ***

  ‘Deco’ Gavin and Brian Rattigan knew that they could easily fill the void. They had been dealing with the Amsterdam supplier for a couple of years by this stage and were trusted customers. As far as the supplier was concerned, they always paid on time and were professional to deal with, so they were hooked up with their own supply. Over the years, they would extend their supply route to include Spain. As well as sending over the cocaine and ecstasy, the Dutch contacts would include free firearms with each shipment as a sweetener. Up to fifty guns of every variety came with the drugs. This meant that the group had access to lethal firearms, such as Glock 9mm pistols, and assault rifles, such as the infamous AK-47. For the first time in Ireland, lethal fragmentation grenades were also imported with drugs and Gardaí would later seize several of them. The gang would show over the next few years that they were not afraid to use the deadly arsenal.

  The end of the 1990s was a boom time in Ireland. The Celtic Tiger economy meant that many middle-class people had unprecedented access to money. This rise in wealth also saw a rise in drug use, especially the use of cocaine for leisure purposes. It marked the beginning of the cocaine epidemic that continues to this day. Besides the increase in drug use amongst the middle classes, there was also a lot of drug use in working-class Dublin. Many were hooked on heroin and required their daily fix, whether or not they had the means to afford it. Crumlin and Drimnagh, not far from the city centre in the Garda ‘G’ District, were prime examples of these working-class areas.

  In the early 1930s, Dublin Corporation began a large building programme in the area. Families from Dublin’s inner city were moved from overcrowded conditions and were relocated to Crumlin (Croimghlinn – ‘Crooked Glen’) and Drimnagh (Druimneach – ‘Ridged Lands’). For many reasons, the area has had a long history of drug problems and suffers high levels of unemployment. It has always had a large number of drug addicts. It quickly became little more than a ghetto, with the authorities failing to build any infrastructure to support the growing population or give the residents anything to do. Many of them inevitably drifted into crime. Detectives who work in Dublin 12 say it is a unique area when it comes to policing. From the time the first house was built, there was always a suspicion about the Gardaí. An unwritten rule developed that you should never, ever talk to the police. Criminals in nearby Tallaght and in the city centre will engage with Gardaí and talk to them, but almost without exception in Dublin 12, the suspects keep their heads down and don’t answer a single question, certainly not one that is on the record. In certain parts of Crumlin and Drimnagh, a Garda informant is regarded as being worse than a paedophile. This suspicion about Gardaí led to some of the country’s most infamous criminals coming out of Crumlin. It was home to ‘The General’, Martin Cahill; ‘The Viper’, Martin Foley, and his ruthless henchman, Seamus ‘Shavo’ Hogan. One senior detective once called Crumlin ‘the home of organised crime in Ireland’. Because of the poverty there, Crumlin and Drimnagh proved to be extremely lucrative drug-dealing turf.

  Most of the original members of the gang led by Brian Rattigan and Declan Gavin had grown up together around a small area in Drimnagh and Crumlin, and were regarded as being extremely tight and close-knit. The original, founding members of the gang were Brian Rattigan, Declan Gavin and his brother, Aidan, brothers John and Noel Roche, Shay O’Byrne, Eddie Redmond and his brother Joey Redmond, Darren Geoghegan, Gavin Byrne.

  The boyhood friends all went to the same school in Drimnagh and had played for the same football team and been members of the same boxing club. The members were extremely violent and determined to make serious amounts of money. They were not about to allow anybody get in the way of their ambition. They started out as petty thieves and joyriders and many were users of drugs, especially cocaine, and often mixed them with bodybuilding steroids. A night out would start with ten or twelve pints of beer followed by two or three ecstasy tablets and four or five lines of cocaine. This made them extremely unstable and paranoid, meaning they would fly off the handle over the slightest thing and were often suspicious of each other’s motives, thinking that other members were plotting against them. The first sign of tension in the gang appeared in early 1998, when a dispute arose between various members of the gang over some money that had apparently gone missing. There was a series of tit-for-tat assaults and criminal damage was done to cars and houses of the core gang members. These assaults and incidents of crim
inal damage eventually spread out to target friends, families and even unconnected relatives of the core gang members. This led to other individuals from outside the immediate gang becoming involved in the growing feud. People like ‘Fat’ Freddie Thompson from Maryland in Dublin 8, and Paddy Doyle from Portland Row, in the north inner city, were dragged into the hostilities. This meant that what was essentially an internal gang feud warped into something far greater and extended far further than Crumlin and Drimnagh.