Operation Eight Stuff up

Americans or Kiwi Police 

Operation 8 carried out on October 15, 2007 will go down as a day of infamy for the New Zealand Police. It was the day the police pretended they were a hit squad as per the USA. It was as if they just had to get into the world wide act to prove to countries like the United States that they had the ability to save the world [well at least NZ] from the terrorist onslaught that the US had brought on itself.

Maybe they felt, like the US, that they could just roam at will beating up the so called bad guys.

But firstly they had to find some one to attack, for unlike the US who did all their practice using CIA operatives and foreign dictators in heaps of South American countries like Columbia and such like, where on the direct orders of the US President murdered thousands while flying drugs back to the US. [See Col. Oliver North trial]

The NZ Police, no doubt aided by the GCSB and the SIS picked a soft target, so after illegal phone tapping and the planting of listening devices they chose the small township of Ruatoki as their training ground.

Police raided the Bay of Plenty township of Ruatoki and executed search warrants around the North Island, arresting 18 people allegedly involved in military-style training camps in the Ureweras. It was later found that doubt about the execution of the search warrants was actually legal.

The police Commissioner then I think realised that the NZ Police were not like the CIA and had to act within the law…shock horror police have to obey the law! So on:

October 29 - Police Commissioner Howard Broad asks the Solicitor-General to allow Terrorism Suppression Act charges to be laid against 12 of the accused.

On November 8 - Solicitor-General David Collins announces he will not allow charges to be laid under the Act, calling it "complex and incoherent".

Then after a year of back peddling and procrastination the police realise their total stuff up and realise their terrorist bull shit was just that so on:

October 17, 2008 - Charges are dropped against one of the accused, Rongomai Pero Bailey. The remaining 17 are on bail facing firearms charges.

But they still try to link the failed terrorism theme and instead come up with a new charge, one that may resonate with their dwindling public support and to stop them from becoming the laughing stock of other police forces so they on:

October 28, 2008 - The Crown also charges five of the accused with participation in an organised criminal group.

Not content with that stupid act, they then procrastinate for a further two and a half years during which on July 8, 2011 - One of the 18 arrestees, Vietnam veteran Tuhoe Francis Lambert, dies,   He was a hero who had defended NZ and the US against the communist hordes, which was heaps more than most of the police had done. Then as unbelievable as it may sound on:

September 6 - Charges against 13 of the accused are dropped after the Supreme Court rules police gathered evidence illegally. However, the court allows the evidence to be admitted in four cases where the offending was serious enough.

Time rolls on but at last the police get some sort of final charges out of the twenty million dollar plus exercise at training themselves to meet NZ’s magical terrorist threat, looked at rationally it was not unlike the US and UK’s absolutely false beat-up of the Weapons of Mass Destruction claims as an excuse to attach Iraq. A smaller scale yes but full of lies and illegal behaviours. So on:

February 13, 2012 - the four remaining accused - Tame Iti, Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara, Emily Bailey and Urs Signer - go on trial in the High Court at Auckland.

March 20 - Iti, Kemara and Bailey are found guilty of six firearms charges, while Signer is found guilty of five firearms charges. The jury is unable to reach a verdict on the charge of participation in an organised criminal group.

Way back in 2008 a complaint was laid with the Independent Police Conduct Authority and nothing had happened, it must be the longest ever inquiry in police history but at last they could delay it no longer and on:

May 24, 2012 - Facing pressure to apologise for the Ruatoki raid, Police Commissioner Peter Marshall says he's "very sorry that innocent individuals, families and a community, were frightened and inconvenienced".

And yet it was after yet another full year, a whole year! before at last the public got just small taste of how bad the whole operation on that fateful day. The police, their bosses, the GCSB and the SIS decided to play games with NZ’s laws by pretending to be photo copies of a Hollywood version of an American hit squad. The cost of making this Peter Jackson Hobbit style exercise in futility has been in my view close to a hundred million dollars, with more to come. For on:

  

May 22, 2013 - The Independent Police Conduct Authority finds roadblocks, searches, detentions and photographing by police during the Ruatoki raids were unlawful, but the operation overall was reasonable and justified.

‘But the operation overall was reasonable and justified’, Who ever wrote those strange words must be a good friend of the police, and decided to give the seven year police / taxpayer sponsored movie a happy ending, for the police anyway.

Our police force has a history that’s becoming infamous for long term horror stuff ups and does not deserve such an unreasonable and unjustifiable finding. But the operation overall was reasonable and justified’ is in my view there only to make any claims against the police in the courts more difficult to win.

The planting of evidence against Allan Thomas, then praising the very cop involved as a hero, the illegal actions at Taneatua and Ruatoki and the rape cases against three senior police officers, and the latest massive stuff up, the illegal raid on Kim Dotcom proves that the greatest training we could give the police in the future is understanding the law, and our people, and most importantly ignoring Hollywood movies.