Hmmmm…
Police ‘biased’ over off-duty officer’s crash
A judge has slammed the police investigation into a crash involving an off-duty officer saying there was a “regrettable but available perception” that it displayed bias in favour of their injured colleague.Police were ordered to pay over $40,000 towards Auckland man Graham Hohepa Anderson’s legal fees in March after Judge Gerard Winter found police were “negligent” in pursuing a case that never should have made it to trial.
He earlier had found Anderson not guilty of careless driving causing injury and said the prosecution had not excluded the “reasonable possibility” that the October 2013 crash was caused by off-duty police officer Mark Hansen, who was injured in the smash.
In his costs decision, Judge Winter stopped short of saying it was a case of police looking after their own, though there was a “perception” that “out of sympathy for a badly injured fellow policeman the police unreasonably pressed on to prosecute Mr Anderson”.
Though he eventually ruled that there was insufficient evidence to find the prosecution was in bad faith, Judge Winter said there was an “available perception” that the police investigation was “tarnished with bias”.
The judge criticised police for calling one of their own officers as an expert.
That witness, Sergeant Mile Tusevljak, did not know of his duties as an impartial expert witness and was “negligent” in preparing his reconstruction of the crash, the judge said.
The mistakes “thereby produced a completely flawed analysis of the accident’s cause”.
…if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, our authority worship syndrome in this country is so severe that even when the cops get caught falsely prosecuting someone else to cover the arse of a mate cop, we call it biased and not out right corruption.
I honestly believe that our slavish devotion to the Police and turning a blind eye to their abuses of power seeds from our colonial forbearers who knew their encroachment upon Maori land was causing friction and so looked the other way when the mounted constabulary turned up to bash any natives spooking the settlers.
The cops clearly set someone else up so their mate could get off, our policing system requires far more oversight and our population needs to get far more skeptical.
Except Police everywhere have similar attitudes regardless of the historical background of the country.
So that makes it OK?
Yeah i think the link to Maori is a little tenuous.
The historic links that the NZ police have in the treatment and bias towards Maori is well documented and that coming from the settlers one by the name of (Edward Cardwell) that recorded such events and the settlers judiciary followed such bias and racist attitudes against maori as was the case in 1886 the inaccurately named compensation court, established to award crown title to settlers operated as law enforcers in the eastern bay of plenty from march 1867.
So links from our countries past (not to mention the high incarceration rates of maori) to the present attitudes and outright corruption can’t be ignored especially when collusion amongst our law enforcers has been systemic and is without doubt linked to our country historically.
Moana Jackson’s report into Māori and the Criminal Justice System (1988) : He Whaipaanga Hou, might be a good place for you to start.
This paper was used to implement some changes.
The Justspeak organisation did a follow up of those changes in 2012: Māori and the Criminal Justice System – A Youth Perspective which might also be of interest to you.
whos you molly
Police have different attitudes depending on whether they were first formed to chase down and discipline fugitive slaves (USA and Brazil), to protect bourgeois property in a reasonably homogeneous society (Scandinavia), or to help keep an invaded people in line (Aotearoa and Australia). Those who have come from a slave catcher background are the worst.
Here’s one for McCready!
I see that as abuse of power by a clique for their own ends, rather than authority worship. The guy that refused to lay down in the face of an unjust police investigation wasn’t worshiping authority. The judge appears to have erred on the side of caution, but he has more authority than the cops.
Definitely corrupt….and even worse when this is the second time we have heard of something similar in recent times, with the young guy down the line somewhere being covered in the recent programme a few weeks back. Strange too, that the woman who is the partner of the guy that helped this young man has gone missing…..weird.
The dirty bastards won’t catch me out, I’ve got dash cams front and rear.
Nothing surprises me anymore in this country, where the MSM report on a missing police dog lost in bush for days, but never report on beneficiaries who get benefits and rights denied by the thousands. The middle class, who they report to, seem to prefer looking after the police, no matter what they do, than the downtrodden, who they rather wish to stay out of their sight.
New Zealand has been turned into a very hypocritical and nasty society under this government, yes also previous ones, for decades now.
People always like animal stories, it is after all about ratings. The turtle that was tracked by satellite got a good mention last night too.
All the hoo haa over Thames, the police dog lost in the Tararuas says quite a lot. Although it was sad that he was lost and nice that he was found, no one is questioning how much money was spent and police time given, to finding a lost dog. Dogs must get lost in the mountains in New Zealand all the time, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a search and rescue mission to find one.
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