Female garda used her official ID to cut up cocaine', it's been claimed.
A female garda arrested in a drugs gang operation once cut cocaine with her official ID, it was claimed today.
Sources said the officer, stationed in North Dublin, used it to chop up lines of the white powder at a party.
She is understood to have been detained while in the company of a notorious gangster who has terrorised the North-West of the country for more than five years.
The officer, arrested in Sligo town on Friday evening alongside the man in his 30s, was immediately suspended by Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan pending the investigation’s outcome.
The operation was part of an ongoing probe by gardai and the Organised Crime Unit into criminal gangs in the area.
The gang of which the arrested man is a member was previously targeted by local and national officers investigating the drugs trade.
Questions had been raised about the female officer in the past and about the people she was associating with and meeting.
It’s understood some of those she was seen in the company of raised suspicion among detectives.
Investigating officers are also trying to establish if the arrested officer has addiction problems herself.
It’s believed she was in a relationship with the man she was arrested alongside and whom gardai believe to be a key figure in one of two feuding gangs based in Sligo.
A number of the gang’s key figures are currently serving prison sentences.
Both were arrested under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act and questioned in relation to drug offences at Ballymote Garda station.
They were released without charge at 6.30pm on Saturday and a file is being prepared for the DPP, which will then decide whether criminal charges will be brought.
It is not the first time a garda has been arrested on suspicion of consorting with a criminal gang.
In the past three years at least two officers have been prosecuted, with one serving a jail sentence.
