Its been done all before, how long before the Irish police start shooting the people.
August 1969 deployment
In August 1969 widespread sectarian violence and street unrest broke out in Northern Ireland, set against the backdrop of the ongoing Northern Ireland civil rights movement. In response the RUC deployed Shorland armored cars in Belfast, initially in a crowd control role.[2] On 14 August an IRA unit[3] opened fire on RUC officers and loyalist militants gathered at the intersection of Dover and Divis Street, at the edge of the predominantly Catholic district. Protestant Herbert Roy (26) was killed[4] and three officers were wounded.[5] Police responded with bursts from Sterling submachine guns.[6] At this point, the RUC, misinterpreting the unrest as an IRA uprising, deployed the Shorlands in a live-fire role,[7] and their .30 calibre bullets reportedly "tore through walls as if they were cardboard".[8] In response to the RUC coming under fire at Divis Street, three Shorlands were requested. The Shorlands came under fire, and were also attacked with an explosive device and petrol bombs. The RUC believed that the shots had come from the Divis Flats complex. RUC officers inside the Shorlands opened fire with their turret-mounted machine-guns. At least thirteen Divis flats were recorded struck in the hail of gunfire. A nine-year-old boy, Patrick Rooney, was killed instantly by Shorland machine-gun fire as he lay in bed in one of the flats. He was the first child fatality during the violence.[9]

The Republican Labour Party MP for Belfast Central, Paddy Kennedy, who was in the vicinity, phoned RUC headquarters and pleaded with Northern Ireland Minister for Home Affairs, Robert Porter, for the Shorlands to be withdrawn and the shooting to cease. Porter responded that this was impossible as "the whole town is in rebellion". Porter told Kennedy that Donegall Street police station was under heavy machine-gun fire when in fact it was undisturbed during the entirety of the unrest.[10] Following the shooting of Catholic man Hugh McCabe in the Divis complex, a mob of 200 loyalists attacked Divis Street and began burning Catholic homes there.[11] Six IRA members in St Comgall's School opened fire with rifle and submachinegun fire, repelling the invasion and wounding eight.[12] Shortly afterwards an RUC Shorland appeared and opened fire on the school,[11] but the IRA unit returned fire and escaped.[7]

The Scarman Tribunal later commissioned by the UK Government to investigate the Northern Ireland violence of August 1969 was highly critical of the RUC's deployment of Shorland armoured cars:

The use of Browning machine-guns in Belfast on 14 August and 15 August... was a menace to the innocent as well as the guilty, being heavy and indiscriminate in its fire: and on one occasion (the firing into St Brendan's block of flats where the boy Rooney was killed) its use was wholly unjustifiable[7]