Between 2016 and his retirement in 2022, Assistant Garda Commissioner John O’Driscoll was the public face of Garda operations targeting organised crime. This put him at the centre of a long-running quest to bring down the Kinahan drug cartel, culminating in US sanctions being imposed – an unprecedented development spearheaded by O’Driscoll.

But the Kinahans were just some of the many notorious drug dealers and criminals O’Driscoll successfully brought to book. During his tenure at Dublin’s Store Street he was tasked with reckoning with the heroin epidemic: his unique approach to community policing got to the root of the power of infamous criminals like Tony Felloni, Michel Cronin and Derek Dunne, stripping them of their assets.

John O’Driscoll retired from An Garda Síochána in June 2022 after 41 years, the last six of which he spent as Assistant Commissioner for Special Crime Operations. From the northside of Dublin, he joined the Garda Síochána in 1981 and was assigned to Fitzgibbon Street Garda station in the north inner-city. He went on to serve in the Garda National Immigration Bureau, Garda National Drug Unit and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, as well as in postings in Swinford, Co. Mayo, and Rathangan, Co. Kildare.