A block party organised by the well known vintage shop Tola Vintage in Temple Bar descended into chaos on Friday night after Gardaí arrived at the scene.
The block party was not officially organised with Culture Night, however has run successfully for the past four years. Tola Vintage told Trinity News that it has always sought permission from its neighbours to host the event.
Three arrests were made by Gardaí, who wrote in a statement to Trinity News that “a number of individuals present, particularly those who had consumed alcohol, failed to comply and actively disrupted Garda directions for persons to disperse from the street”.
Gardaí “became aware of public safety concerns in relation to a very large crowd gathering outside a premises on Fownes Street. The retail premises, which had advertised an event on social media, was playing music into the public street and had attracted a large crowd, unsuitable for the street capacity.”
”The premises had also not put in any additional public safety measures for the advertised event. Gardaí initially engaged with the management of the premises with a view to managing the situation but received limited support”, a spokesperson for An Garda Síochána wrote.
“An operational decision was made to manage the developing public safety issue with the increasing crowd on the street. Members of An Garda Síochána commenced to engage with and disperse the crowd in an orderly manner”.
A manager at Tola Vintage, Ayuba Salaudeen, gave his account of the night to Trinity News. At 9:30PM, Saludeen said Gardaí “told us to turn off the music, which we did”.
There was then a conversation about dispersing the crowd after Gardaí said they needed to be able to drive their van down Fownes Street in Temple Bar. Tola Vintage then began to try to move the crowd to the sides of the street, to allow the van to pass.
“We were on the mic to tell people ‘it’s over, they want us to clear the street’. They (the Gardaí) said we tried to turn the music back on, but we weren’t”.
“They said ‘actually, move the crowd now’”, to which Salaudeen responded “give us a few minutes to move the crowd – there’s people waiting for friends, finishing their drink, it’s impossible to move this crowd now”.
After this conversation, as Tola Vintage staff were about to tell the crowd to disperse from their microphone, “about ten of them (Gardaí) just rushed. It just kicked off from there”, Salaudeen said.
“Honestly, I just think they didn’t like the look of the crowd”, he said, and cited a similar block party on O’Connell Street, “where people had a DJ deck, and they were there until four o’clock in the morning”.
“It wasn’t fair, it was very very aggressive […] they ruined the night for a lot of people”.
Tola Vintage claim that no noise complaint was made against them.
Salaudeen said that within 15 minutes, around 50 Gardaí were at the scene, although he stressed that he doesn’t “want it to feel like we’re attacking them, because we’re not, of course they do a lot for us”.
A day after the event, Tola Vintage wrote in a statement posted to Instagram that “this will be our last year hosting a block party outside our store, as we don’t receive the same respect given to other businesses and streets in Dublin, where people are free to drink on the streets and party every weekend.”
Photos and videos from the incident have since gone viral across social media. One such video shows a group of at least four gardaí physically restraining one man to the ground while a line of gardaí attempt to disperse the crowd off Upper Fownes Street.
These scenes have been described online as “extreme force” and “absolutely unreasonable” behaviour by Gardaí. Others have stated that this was “clearly racialised”.
Black and Irish, a community organising group that aims to “highlight the struggles and celebrate the successes of the Black and Mixed Race Irish community”, wrote in a statement that they “are deeply concerned by the footage and images we are seeing online”.
They said that a conversation on the “over policing [of] black owned or predominantly black attended events” must now take place.
An Garda Síochána have “engaged with representative groups” since Saturday and they say “this engagement is ongoing”. They maintain that “any actions undertaken by Gardaí on the night were solely focused on public safety in a public space”.
