The life of a Policeman...or SIS operative.

Video Justice Rules 2011

The Law and its enforcers

It must be really hard these days to be a policeman or woman. Firstly you must obey the law, be an upright citizen, pay your taxes, and keep to the speed limit and so on.

You can’t as a policeman join the local Black Power gang or be on the board of financial failures like South Canterbury Finance or even belong to groups like Green Peace. You are restricted in voicing your own opinions over matters like abortions and witch craft in Christchurch kindergartens. You even have to get permission to trespass and photograph private individuals who you think are breaking the laws of the land. You may even have to answer questions about your fellow policemen that have been accused of raping or having sexual connections with others. All this is unfair after all you are a policeman or police officer. You watch the imitation police on television in shows like LA Law shoot the bad guys and yet you are not even allowed to carry a weapon on your daily rounds, how unfair is that. You watch politicians and business people take kick backs, you watch as financial companies rip off citizens and you are supposedly prevented from doing just that, how fair is that you ask. The public wants you to get tough on crime, the politicians cry for tougher penalties each election year…it’s tough being a policeman or woman. So why do you do it?

So why do others do what they do?

Why are Doctors doing what they do, to save life, help the sick, cure the ill. Why do Teachers do what they do, to educate those needing to learn, to impart knowledge to the uneducated.

The police are there to uphold the law and they do that by enforcing the rules by which we govern ourselves.

When doctors fail to uphold their oath to save life they are struck off, when teachers fail to educate their authority to teach is removed, but when police break the laws they swore to uphold…the laws are changed so that they can’t be prosecuted…surely that’s not fair. This from Gordon Campbell of Scoop. 

“It would be easier to respect the law if – repeatedly – the Police and SIS didn’t seem so willing to break it whenever it suits them, while relying on the politicians to come along and clean up the mess they leave behind.

Ordinary citizens don’t have that luxury. They have to respect the law that exists. Yet that isn’t the sort of thing that seems to bother Mr Plod unduly, or our Spy vs. Spy operatives. Perhaps they have more important things in mind”…Gordon Campbell.

Police stuff up...who are the terrorists?

Police / SIS raid

After four years the Supreme Court judgment in the case of the Urewera 18 has now been unsuppressed and, contrary to the police and main stream media spin, the searches used to gather evidence were both unlawful and known to be so by police. The police trespassed on privately-owned land without warrants, and conducted video surveillance with no statutory authority to do so. The Chief Justice really gave them a hammering and was contemptuous of the police's behavior. It was both unauthorised and was known to be so by the powers that be. She wrote;

·         “I regard it as a significantly exacerbating factor that the film surveillance was undertaken deliberately without legal authority, in the knowledge that there was no lawful investigatory technique available to be used... In circumstances where the police officer in charge of the inquiry knew that there was no authority to be obtained for such filmed surveillance, the deliberate unlawfulness of the police conduct in the covert filming, maintained over many entries and over a period of some 10 months, is destructive of an effective and credible system of justice”.

·         The breaches of s 21 were not merely technical or inconsequential procedural errors but "flagrant violation of right", deliberately undertaken. The breach of human rights entailed the covert filming of individuals who did not appreciate that they were observed and who were not displaying their behaviour for public observation. Because I take the view that the police filming was unlawful, I consider that rule of law considerations are also engaged.

And she's not the only one. Here's Justice Tipping:

·         I do not consider there is any escape from the view that the police deliberately breached the appellants’ rights. Detective Sergeant Pascoe acknowledged that he knew there was no legislative authority to install surveillance cameras. This, no doubt, is why he did not seek a warrant to do so. The Detective Sergeant did not profess to have authority from any other source. He repeatedly insisted that he had sought judicial oversight for the installation of the surveillance cameras. This claim comes from his having included statements in his affidavits, when seeking the warrants, setting out that this is what the police intended to do. It is not clear what purpose the police had in informing the issuing Judge of what they intended to do other than being able to say that they had candidly told a judge of their intentions. But that, frankly, gets them nowhere if it was an attempt to treat the Judge as having, by default, implicitly authorised or approved their conduct.

·         If the breach was not deliberate it was undoubtedly reckless because, at best, the position in law was decidedly unclear and, in the very difficult and unusual circumstances facing them, the police, extraordinary as it may seem, did not obtain any legal advice. It is difficult to resist the inference that formal legal advice was not sought because the police knew or strongly suspected what the advice would be and that it would make it more difficult for them to proceed as they intended.

·         In view of the conclusion I have reached, it is not necessary to determine whether this state of affairs amounted to bad faith. It is enough to say that I find it impossible to hold that the police honestly believed that the video surveillance was lawfully undertaken.

After reading just these few findings from the court, it proves that the police, no doubt backed by the SIS knowingly broke the law, not once but many times. Are the NZ police able to ignore the law, and act like a bunch of thugs? If you or I acted in this manner we’d find ourselves in front of a court in double quick time, but not the police. In fact they haven’t even answered a police behaviour complaint after two or three bloody years.