Denis O'Brien (police officer): Difference between revisions

Dennis O'Brien (dead 1942), often called "Dinny O’Brien", was a veteran of the Easter Rising and the IRA who later joined the Irish police and was killed by his former comrades in arms.

O’Brien had fought with his two brothers, Larry and Paddy, in Marrowbone Lane during the Easter Rising of 1916.

Afterwards they had fought together in the Irish War of Independence and subsequently took the anti-treaty side in the Irish Civil War. In fact, Paddy was in command of the force which seized The Four Courts in 1922, the act which precipitated the Civil War. Later that year, Paddy was shot dead by pro-Treaty forces in Enniscorthy.

O'Brien remained a loyal member of the IRA until 1933 - when De Valera, newly come to power, allied himself with the then legalized IRA against the Fascist Blueshirts. De Valera then issued a call for IRA members to join the police and help confront the Fascist threat.

O'Brien was among those who answered the call - an act which at the time seemed quite in accord with his previous career, especially as the Blueshirts were based on the IRA's hated historic foes from the time of the Civil War.

However, O'Brien stayed on in the police when De Valera broke with the IRA, but also introduced a more Republican constitution and abolished the hated Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown.

In the 1940's O'Brien became deeply involved in hunting down his former IRA comrades-in-arms - which he apparently justified by the fact that the IRA had in the meantime moved from a militant anti-Fascist stance to an active collaboration with Nazi Germany.

At the time he was a Sergeant in the Special Branch Division of the Garda Siochána, which had its headquarters at Dublin Castle. This unit was referred to as the Broy Harriers as they were led by Ned Broy.

The IRA considered him a despicable traitor, a rancour still evident in the way O'Brien is remembered in radical Irish Nationalist publications up to the present, even after the passage of more than half a century:

""Within a few years, he was fighting and hunting his own, as rapacious as the most dyed in the wool Stater. In his time, he cut down quite a few Republicans, Liam Rice and Charlie McGlade among them, shot while resisting arrest. O’Brien built up his own secret network in pubs, hotels, at stations and among the news vendors on the streets. By 1942, he had turned into a vicious and determined hunter and the IRA gave the order that he was to be executed" (quoted from the website of The Concerned Group for Republican Prisoners - see [1]).

At 9.45am on September 9, 1942 at Ballyboden, Rathfarnham, County Dublin, O’Brien left his house and began getting into his car. Three IRA men, wearing trench coats and armed with Thompson sub machine guns, came up the drive and opened fire. The shots from the Thompson smashed the windows of his car, wounding him. He alighted and ran for cover to the gate but before reaching it, he was cut down by a single round to the head.

The killing of O’Brien was commanded by Charlie Kerins. In the aftermath, the police started a massive manhunt. Kerins was finally caught and sentenced to death, and the verdict carried out at President De Valera's firm insistence, in spite of numerous calls for clemency.