When Mark Mitchell had to do his u-turn on Police recruitment numbers, TDB wrote…
He was being honest about the situation rather than politicking about it because the reality of Police retention was bigger than the election bullshit criticism.
…the ever brilliant and incisive Jarrod Gilbert examines this fact and concludes Luxon and Winston’s bloody mindedness will see Police sworn in who are not of standard which is going to cause enormous problems…
It’s impossible to overstate the difficulty of transforming a person from a civilian into a police officer in the space of a 16- (soon to be 20) week recruit course. If you don’t have high-calibre people capable of making that transition, you are only going to create serious issues down the track by giving blue uniforms to people who shouldn’t have them.
The state gives police enormous powers: to detain people, to carry and use lethal weapons, the ability to apply discretion around incidents and therefore public perceptions of justice. They often deal with people at their very worst due to the nature of their activities or, and increasingly, due to mental health issues.
Giving that job to people who are not up to it, and who are forced through simply due to unrealistic timeframes, would be disastrous. They will make the wrong decisions, be more susceptible to corruption, create unsafe conditions for the public and their colleagues, and apply the wrong laws or processes and therefore threaten justice or allow offenders to not be convicted based on technicalities.
…the problem confronting us is that Luxon and Winston don’t care if we gift Police some thugs because they want that kind of Police Force to stare down da Gangs and increasingly to protect them and their interests as austerity starts to build momentum resistance alongside environmental, renter, worker and Māori concerns.
Winston and Luxon will drop the standards and get 600 new Police, 100 more than what they need, just to add some biffo and bash.
Most right wing voters already believe Police Commissioner Andrew Coster gives every constable a cuddle when it rains and personally injects recreational drugs into gang members at monthly Police Blue Disco BBQs.
Police have worked hard to build bridges with the communities that are rife with crime and domestic violence.
This Government will staff those bridges with arsonists.
Police need far more than 20 weeks training FFS!
We need longer training, more intense training alongside far better wages and far better conditions.
We need to ensure Police have the best counselling services and the best subsides and benefits.
Longer holiday times better insurance and super deals.
News recently that Police were going to Food Banks because they couldn’t afford groceries is heart breaking and shocking.
Police do a fucking difficult job and are given enormous powers and you need them to be reasonable, law abiding and emotionally intelligent. You can’t have that expectation if they are underfunded and under resourced and the stress becomes psychologically destabilising.
Our modern Police force has grown, we should not allow it to regress into a thug force by lowering standards to win political points.
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Um, we’re already at that point and have been for decades, I don’t see how it can get worse.
Longer training won’t do a damn thing to fix the overseers.
Out of idle curiosity, how long is police training in Finland?
Finland – Three years to get the degree that you require.
Sounds so much better. Much more like a nursing degree which is surely the police equivalent.
Twenty weeks training is about what you get in many American states. That can’t be good given their record. Most if not all European countries train their police for eighteen months to 2 years.
Drug growers/dealers/cooks with police protection are running Waipori Falls Body Corporate AKA massive drug operation along with hit jobs on innocent people.
It’s total corruption, and completely disgusting. If what is happening here is happening in other areas around NZ then you can call the cops a drug gang with the courts going along with police hit jobs. Waipori Falls BC needs a fraud investigation.
NZ has descended into a third world country with police corruption so obvious it’s ridiculous.
The cops not at the food banks are paid cartel cops down this way. I am not fucken joking this is what is happening at Waipori Falls. Organised crime!!!!! Page 8 ODT on Saturday, my husband spewing up blood because of this evil alliance lunatic mess. The article is under a paywall. Look up Waipori Falls Water Woes. The police told me someone is going to be killed up here….. you can’t even call out corruption in NZ because it’s so bloody corrupt nobody takes any notice.
I saw those who should have been weeded out earlier in the process of becoming a cop.
I was at the Port in Lyttelton yesterday and saw the fiasco with the police.
EG46 is a real problem, pepper sprayed a number of people who were on the footpath. Totally illegal, then charged into those on the footpath with some of his comrades and picked of various people simply standing on the footpath and arrested them.
Firstly, we need a politic with a big hairy set of balls, or vagina, because as we know, those things can take a real pounding aye @ Fabulous Betty White RIP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_White. Tax the billionaires ( Read investigate re how they became multi-billionaires / millionaires and bankster flies on an agrarian economy few islands. ) then pay a basic living wage to everyone eligible re an as to be determined threshold. I reckon $30K. CGTax on housing but not the main home.
Free buses, free trains, free ferries. Refer tax re the banksters, billionaire and millionaires above.
Every second month is a months worth of four day weeks because we work for too hard to support the multi-billionaires / millionaires and bankster flies greedily helping themselves to what should instead be our money.
Would that be a start? Because everything about everything is wrong in my opinion. We don’t need 600,000 needing food grants and we don’t need 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires with a nett wealth of $50 million each or four foreign owned banks i.e. jonky’s ANZ then ASB, BNZ and Westpac standing over our gutless politicians while they steal a reported $180.00 a second 24/7/365.
The miracle must surely be that only 52 thousand farmers support such outrageous distortions of a cold blooded reality. How the fuck do they do it?