Ex-undercover officer who hunted drug dealers reveals ‘terrifying’ violence he faced – and the secret he kept from family
Being bitten by drug dealers and stabbed with syringes “went with the territory” for undercover police officer Michael O’Sullivan.
Aged just 22, Michael became part of a secret unit in Ireland’s national police force when Dublin was in the grips of its first heroin epidemic in the early 1980s.
As the problem “mushroomed”, the city became a “dangerous, crime-ridden area” – and it was “disastrous for law enforcement”, Michael says.
“The situation in Ireland – it was like Mexico,” he tells Sky News.
“There were people being visibly kidnapped out of Dublin. There were two or three bank robberies in the country a day.
“You had armed men going into country towns and holding up three banks at the same time.
“It was chaotic.”
Pic: Sky UK
Frustrated at the Gardai’s failure to tackle Dublin’s heroin problem through conventional methods, Michael began working with an undercover team known as the Mockeys who posed as drug users to catch dealers in the act.
But faced with the prospect of lengthy jail sentences, dealers would turn to violent tactics in a bid to escape arrest.
“Lots of us got fingers bitten,” Michael says.
“You were getting bitten by guys who could be Aids carriers.
“There were a lot of injuries. A guy got hit with a hammer. One guy was bitten four times. (There were) black eyes, stitches.
“People lost teeth. One guy got a jaw fractured.
“The inner city was a tough place.
“A lot of these people were violent criminals anyway. You’re stood between them and five years (in prison) – and they didn’t care how they got away.
“They’d turn like animals. This was fight or flight.
“One guy on a top-storey balcony tried to push me over the balcony and I had to hang on for dear life… I was about five floors up.
“Looking back on it – it was hairy.”
Pic: Sky UK
‘Terrifying’ undercover work
Michael says he never used drugs but had grown up in a tough part of Dublin – where someone in his class was “done for murder” – so he could “talk the talk” during his undercover work.
He also was “very slight”, weighing 10-and-a-half stone, and at 5ft 9in tall, he only just met the minimum height requirement to serve in the Gardai at the time.
“You might sit on a wall or in a park with all these drug addicts for about an hour, an hour-and-a-half, swapping stories,” he says. “Then you went and you did the buy.
“Was I frightened? I was terrified.
“You were operating on adrenalin.
“You don’t have a radio. You leave your gun back at the office. You have your ID card in your sock.
“You go into these flat complexes and other drug addicts would mug you or rip you off.
“Some jobs didn’t work out.
“You went in and just hoped for the best.
“It was terrifying but you’re young, you feel invincible.”
Pic: Sky UK
Michael spent about six years working undercover before going on to achieve the rank of assistant commissioner in the Gardai and then leading the EU’s anti-drugs smuggling agency.
Now retired, he features in a new Sky documentary, Narcos Dublin, about the city’s illegal drug trade, from the introduction of heroin in the late 1970s through to the 1990s as cocaine and ecstasy flooded into the country.
The three-part series, from the team behind the BAFTA-winning documentary Liverpool Narcos, charts how the notorious Dunne family rose to become one of Ireland’s most terrifying gangs and looks at the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin, who had worked to expose drug barons.
Anti-drugs campaigners on the streets of Dublin during the city’s heroin epidemic. Pic: Sky UK
Protecting family from ‘darker side of life’
Michael, who arrested Micky “Dazzler” Dunne on drug charges, says it was “strange” to watch another member of the family, Christy, being interviewed for the series.
“It was like looking at something in the past to see him,” he adds.
“It brought back memories – some of them not very good.”
Michael says his family were unaware his work involved meeting dealers and pretending he wanted to buy drugs until they watched the documentary.
“My kids weren’t around at the time – my wife knew I was off doing some sort of surveillance stuff and drugs stuff,” he says.
“You see the darker side of life. When you come home, you don’t talk about it.
“You close the door on it in your head. That’s the only way… you don’t worry the people at home.”
Former heroin addict Paul Tracy speaks in the documentary. Pic: Sky UK
Ex-addict who used heroin over 37 years
As well as featuring the efforts to tackle Ireland’s illegal drug trade, the series hears the stories of former substance users including ex-heroin addict Paul Tracy.
He first injected the drug in Dublin at the age of 18 and continued using it over 37 years before finally going clean at the age of 55.
Now aged 59, the hairdresser says he was told by doctors he had just five years to live when he was 22 after testing HIV positive, which was linked to his heroin use.
“I had a promise of five years if I stayed healthy. If I was to use (heroin), I wouldn’t last two years,” he tells Sky News.
“I thought I would rather have two years on my terms.
“It was a self-destructive time.”
He adds: “I was kind of excited. That was irrational.
“(I thought) ‘Oh my god, I’m going to die young’. I had visions of my heroic, young death. Mad s**t. I can’t even explain it to you.
“I couldn’t wait to tell some people.”
Paul Tracy tested HIV positive when he was 22. Pic: Sky UK
‘Heroin takes your soul’
Despite his diagnosis in 1985, Paul says “incredibly” the HIV virus has now been undetectable for more than 25 years.
Describing his early heroin use, he says: “This thing made me feel really cool and relaxed and I liked the kind of person I was.
“Once the narcotic effects had worn off after an hour or two, I’d have this nice feeling – a false sense, maybe – that I was in control, and I was calm, and I was together.
“I actually liked this new person that came up in the middle of the drug. That was a very dangerous thing, that attraction to me.”
But as his addiction developed – which at its height saw him taking two grams of heroin a day – he turned to committing fraud to fund his habit.
“There’s a poverty mentality around heroin because you never have enough,” he says.
“Every time you see 20 quid, it’s a get-well card.
“The obsession was so deep in me that I needed to break the obsession.
“I could go through the cold turkey all the time. I could never stay off it. The obsession was always with me. I needed something to break that.
“Everything else takes your money, your reputation. Heroin takes your soul.
“Nobody can take heroin and retain their soul.”
Dublin Narcos is available to watch on Sky Documentaries and Now TV from today.
US sanctions against Russia’s two largest energy companies, the state-owned Rosneft and privately held Lukoil, are perhaps the most significant economic measures imposed by the West since the invasion of Ukraine.
If fully implemented, they have the potential to significantly choke off the flow of fossil fuel revenue that funds Russia’s war machine, but their power lies not in directly denying Russia access to the tankers, ports and refineries that make the oil trade turn, but the US financial system that greases the wheels.
Ever since the invasion, the Russian government has proved masterful at evading sanctions, aided and abetted by allies of economic convenience and an oil industry with decades of experience.
Ukraine war latest: Zelenskyy expresses relief at Trump move
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
New US sanctions on Russia: What do we know?
While the West, principally the EU, has largely turned off the taps and stopped buying Russian oil, China, India and Turkey became the largest consumers, with a shadow fleet of tankers ensuring exports continued to flow.
Data from the Centre for Research into Energy and Clean Air (CREA) shows that while fossil fuel revenues have fallen from more than €1bn a day before the war, they have remained above €600m since the start of 2023, only dipping towards €500m in the last month.
None of that oil has been heading for the US, but these sanctions will directly impact the ability of the Russian companies, and anyone doing business with them, to operate within America’s financial orbit.
According to the order from the US Office for Foreign Asset Control, the sanctions block all assets of the two companies, their subsidiaries and a number of named individuals, as well as preventing US citizens or financial institutions from doing business with them.
It also threatens foreign financial institutions that “facilitate transactions… involving Russia’s military-industrial base” with direct or secondary sanctions.
Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting in Moscow.
Pic: Sputnik/Reuters
In practice, the measures should prevent the two companies from accessing not just dollars, but trading markets, insurance and other services with any financial connection to the US.
Taken in harness with similar steps announced by the UK earlier this month, analysts believe they can have a genuinely chilling effect on the market for Russian oil and gas.
Russia’s customers for oil in China, India and Turkey will also be affected, with the largest companies, state-owned and private, expected to be unwilling to take the risk of engaging directly with sanctioned entities.
Indian companies are already reported to be “recalibrating” their imports following the announcement, which came just a week after Donald Trump announced an additional 25% import tariff on Indian goods as punishment for the country’s reliance on Russian oil.
Read more:
Russia has responded with bravado to US sanctions
Trump imposes sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil firms
That does not mean that Russian oil and gas exports will cease. There are other unsanctioned Russian energy companies that can still trade, and ever since the first barrel of oil was tapped, the industry has proved adept at evading sanctions intended to interrupt its flow from one country or another.
Any significant increase in the oil price beyond the 5% seen in the aftermath of the announcement could also put pressure on the White House, which is at least as sensitive to fuel prices at home as it is to foreign wars.
But analysts Kpler expect the sanctions to cause “an immediate, short-term hiatus in Russian crude exports, as it will take time for sellers to reorganise and rebuild their trading systems to circumvent restrictions and ease buyers’ concerns”.
And Russian gas will, for now, continue to flow into Europe, where distaste for Vladimir Putin‘s imperial ambitions has not killed the appetite for his fuel. While the EU has this week imposed sanctions on liquified natural gas (LNG), they will not be fully enforced until 2027.
World
Dublin protests: Prams filled with fireworks as teens – and children as young as seven – clash with police
At least 23 people have been arrested during a second night of violent disorder near an asylum hotel in Dublin.
Two police officers were taken to hospital with injuries sustained during clashes with protesters – including one who was struck on the head by a bottle.
A Sky News crew was caught in the confusion as police charged at crowds, who were throwing fireworks, stones and other debris.
Pic: PA
It is the third night of demonstrations at the Citywest Hotel following an alleged sexual assault in the early hours of Monday morning.
A demonstration in the wake of the incident, which allegedly involved a 10-year-old girl, turned violent on Tuesday night. A police officer was injured and six arrests were made.
A 26-year-old man, who cannot be named due to rules that apply to all sexual assault cases in the Republic of Ireland, appeared in court on Tuesday charged over the alleged attack.
Gardai officers block protesters near the Citywest Hotel in Dublin. Pic: PA
Police had earlier pledged a “robust response” if the violence continued.
Between 7pm and 8pm, hundreds of protesters faced off with around 40 uniformed officers.
The uniformed officers were replaced with the Public Order Unit, who were carrying plastic shields and additional body protection.
A police van was set on fire on Tuesday night.
Protesters detained after stand-off
Hundreds of protesters had been facing off against the public order unit of the Irish police force along Citywest Drive.
While large parts of the crowd dispersed throughout the night, an additional public order unit was deployed to tackle those remaining at the protest shortly after 10pm.
A number of protesters have been detained after fireworks and rocks were thrown at police. Pic: PA
Several of those caught between the two units were tackled and detained as they tried to flee.
Justice minister Jim O’Callaghan said “many have been arrested” and “more will follow” – and went on to praise officers who had responded professionally to “thuggish violence” in the area.
Mr O’Callaghan vowed that those arrested would be “charged, named and dealt with relentlessly” by the criminal justice system.
World
Donald Trump imposes sanctions against Russia’s two biggest oil companies as frustration grows with Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war
Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies – and spoke of his frustration with Vladimir Putin.
In a major policy shift, new restrictions have been unveiled against Rosneft and Lukoil – as well as dozens of subsidiaries – due to “Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.
“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
“Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. We encourage our allies to join us in, and adhere to, these sanctions.”
The move marked a significant change for the Trump administration, which has veered between pressuring Moscow and taking a more conciliatory approach aimed at securing peace in Ukraine.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters at the White House. Pic: Reuters
Trump frustrated with Putin
The US president has resisted pressure to impose energy sanctions on Russia, hoping that Putin would agree to end the fighting. But with no end in sight, he said he felt it was time.
Mr Trump explained he has a “very good relationship” with his Russian counterpart, but felt he had to cancel their planned meeting as “it didn’t feel right to me”.
In a sign of growing frustration, he told reporters: “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it. But we’ll do it in the future.
“I have good conversations. And then, they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere.”
He also hinted that the sanctions could be lifted if the Russian president was prepared to cooperate in peace talks.
“We hope that they [the sanctions] won’t be on for long,” he said in the Oval Office. “We hope that the war will be settled.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Putin-Trump talks: The view from Moscow
Trump wants Xi to help with Ukraine
Ahead of a meeting next week with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, Mr Trump said he would like Beijing to help put pressure on Moscow to halt the fighting.
“I think he [Xi] can have a big influence on Putin. I think he can have a big influence … he’s a respected man. He’s a very strong leader of a very big country. And we will certainly be talking about Russia-Ukraine,” he said.
Xi and Putin have formed a strategic alliance between their countries.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Why Tomahawks are off the table
Ukraine denied Tomahawk missiles
However, Mr Trump warned he is not prepared to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles, which Kyiv has requested.
He explained it would take the Ukrainians up to a year to learn how to use the “highly complex” weapons.
“The only way a Tomahawk is going to be shot … is if we shot it. And we’re not going to do that.
“It takes a year of intense training to learn how to use it, and we know how to use it, and we’re not going to be teaching other people.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024