In the Line of Ire

A couple of weeks ago I put a post where I criticised the gardai for allegedly overreacting to people dancing on the streets of Dublin at the Reclaim the streets festival two years ago.
New information has come to light that forces me to reconsider my criticisms.
A report in yesterday's Irish Examiner details some of the vicious abuse they were subjected to and to which the only reasonable response could be violence.
If you are of a sensitive disposition, please navigate away from this page now.
It seems that the Gardai were called "Cock-Suckers".
I say "seems" because I was reading this in the Examiner and they censored the bit of that term before the hyphen. Therefore it's possible that the people who were making merry on the streets may have been accusing the cops of being gullible people from Cork, which would be way out of line. It's also possible that they may have been accused of being "Cook-Suckers", implying they were performing fellatio on a former British foreign secretary. But I'm going to assume that they were suggesting that the gardai perform fellatio in general.
This is of course, an outrageous suggestion, though the fact that the Guards reacted the way the did might suggest that they protest a little too much. After all, they do spend quite a lot of time in Templemore where the dorms are presumably segregated and such is the culture of secrecy within the force that it's unlikely that any homo-erotic incidents would ever be reported.
I allude to the fact that some of the guards are now women, though the suggestion that any of them would engage in a sexual act not designed by the almighty to promote procreation should immediately be dismissed out of hand.
It also seems that someone made a "lewd gesture" at one of the cops, which appears to have been masturbatory in nature. Again, while it's possible that some of the guards may have indulged in onanistic acts when they were younger, the idea that any of them spill their seed when they have big truncheons to play with instead is of course ludicrous.
But what does the gardai's reaction to all of this say about them?
The fact that they described these acts as "lewd Gestures" without any detail suggests a certain prudishness on their part. It's possible that some of them might have grown up in the John McQuaid era when innocent books like The Tailor and the Ansty were banned while sexaul abuse of children took place en masse, and often with the collusion of the guards, behind closed doors, which of course is the sort of place where that sort of thing belongs.
But why did they react so violently? Perhaps when they signed up to be boys (or Girls) in blue they expected to be apprending armed gangs of heroin dealers and wiping up the blood of victims of violent crime off the footpath, but were never warned that students might use foul language in their general presence.
The fact that these statements were allowed on the court's record, let alone being reported in a "National" newspaper, again shows how ludicrously overprotected the guards are.
I wear my hair longish and often dress in natural fibres, so people frequently shout the word "Hippy" at me, which they don't always mean as a compliment. I cycle, which leaves me open to all sorts of abuse from motorists and Pedestrians. But I don't have the right to club any of them to a bloody pulp in response, nor would I want such a right.
But for the tender souls who constitute the Thin Blue Line between order and a chaotic world where students can dance on the street to their hearts content, such priviliges will continue to be closely guarded.