Galway Bay fm newsroom - Galway gardai are targeting illegal parking in the city with an increase of almost 75 percent in parking tickets issued.
The figures were revealed at a meeting of the City Joint Policing Committee at City Hall this week. (25/9)
The latest garda figures show that gardai in the city issued almost 700 more Fixed Charge Penalty Notices for parking offences in the first 8 months of this year, compared to the same period last year.
Mandatory Alcohol Testing checkpoints in the city also doubled this year, according to Chief Superintendent Tom Curley.
There was one fatal road collision involving a pedestrian during the period and six road incidents which resulted in serious injury, double last year's figure.
Gardai recorded more than 100 drink driving offences in the city since the start of the year, and the Chief Super told JPC members that another 8 drink drivers were detected in the past five days.
Positively, there has been a 14 per cent decrease in speeding offences in the city.
Chief Super Curley said that one of his sergeants has been very proactive in setting up checkpoints and enlisting the help of reserve gardai to tackle the lifesaving road offences, such as wearing seatbelts and phone-use while driving.
New bye-laws were established recently by the city council to give powers to gardai to confiscate alcohol if people are drinking illegally in public.
86 Fixed Charge Penalties have been issued since the new bye-laws were introduced.
Chief Superintendent Curley also informed the meeting that the Galway garda division will be getting 5 new garda recruits from Templemore next week.
However 9 gardai are set to retire next year and he is working with district superintendents and inspectors to establish what number of resources is needed to adequately run a police service in the division
