I’ve never really understood this Country’s authority worship of cops.
When Green MP Tamatha Paul suggested earlier this year that some parts of the community didn’t feel safe with the Police, the entire establishment erupted in calls against her for daring to imply the Police weren’t the greatest group of blokes in the entire Southern Hemisphere and that such talk was bordering on witchcraft.
Those voices so quick to criticise Tamatha are all very quiet post McSkimming’s aren’t they?
Comrades – 90% of my interactions with NZ Police have been negative and I have witnessed first hand their abuse of power, underhand tactics and out right corruption.
When it comes to the pigs, I’m Jewish and Muslim.
Don’t get me wrong.
First responders? Heroes
Fireman? Heroes
Ambulance staff? Heroes.
People who wake up each day saying, “I am the law! Respect my authority” – they need some oversight.
I think NZ has a cultural hangover from our settler days.
The NZ Police Force grew out of the Mounted Constabulary, a thug force who was ostensibly put together to go bash the bejesus out of drunk Māori at the edge of the settlement.
The unspoken deal between white settler NZ and the Mounted Constabulary was, ‘we will turn a blind eye to whatever heavy handed tactics you want to use, as long as you make us feel safe’.
That mindset of turning a blind eye to Police tactics to protect us from our fears of the things that go bump in the night has extended all the way from our settler culture to today.
I have been banging on for decades now that the IPCA simply does not have the investigative powers, the resources or the legislative structure to provide appropriate oversight of the NZ Police, (criticisms I might add that have been responded to as sacrilege and heresy for most of the time I have been making them), well after McSkimmings and all that has been revealed there, it seems like most rational people now see the enormous need for an Independent guard dog against Police corruption.
In 1943, NZs Ambassador to America, Sir George Laking, reflected on the surprising ability of the NZ Government to pass authoritarian powers against the citizens of NZ with little to no resistance from Kiwis by saying, “Much that was accomplished in those early years was possible only because of the absence of any detailed or sustained public interest in the issues”.
We have become experts in a hyper laid back culture of turning a blind eye.
Remember – there is no depression in NZ, or corruption and we don’t know how lucky we are.
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There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of “bad apples”. But how to prune the orchard?
End of the day , is the other end of the spectrum of Evil. You have to have some ‘ force’ of sorts to protect us from the LIBERTARIAN’s fantasies as they appear to legitimise plunder, theft, hate crimes, blackmail, sex and labour exploitation, pillaging, extortion, fraud.. calling them their Rights???
Remember the origins of the NZ Police is predicated on ethnically cleansing Maori from their lands and livelihoods to make way for European settlements.
In 1867 the colonial defense force was replaced by the Armed Constabulary Forces which combined military and policing roles. The Armed Constabulary, along with Maori allies (Kupapa) did most of the fighting for the crown during the later phases of the New Zealand wars. They were also prominent in efforts to suppress the non-violent resistance movement to land confiscation that emerged out of Parihaka, in Taranaki, after 1879.
This campaign culminated in the invasion of the settlement by 1,600 members of the Armed Constabulary and volunteers on 5 November1881. Later in 1886, the Armed Constabulary was split into separate military and police units, the forerunners of the modern-day police and army.
Soon the pigshit will be out collecting saliva of drivers randomly and no doubt they will target brown peoples in lower socio-economic areas, but will they target areas like Khandallah, Eastbourne or sit along Oriental Parade, I doubt it more likely they will target areas like Taita, Naenae and Stokes Valley. And given the Police have to meet a target of fifty thousand a year are we going to see the same issue as the thirty thousand falsified breathe tests. National are keen to make more criminals out of more NZers and keen to build more prisons this is a sad indictment on our country, remember English called prisons a moral and fiscal failure, yet our most unpopular PM is happy to keep using the stick.
Great post. Fortunately I was raised by parents to question most things, and I also am very wary of the police. I have over the years seen some of the corruption that has been in the public arena, think Arthur Allan Thomas and a number of other high profile murders where people have been stitched up. But there are so many other smaller but significant things. When the IPCA get a complaint they send it to the relevant cop shop for their opinion, can anyone imagine that any cop is going to come back and saying yes well the complainant is right.
I have been on too many protests to think things are all rosy, the ones that are just out of school are very keen to put some runs on the board and frankly that means anything at all they can do. Getting ticketed for parking partly on the road and partly on the footpath whilst unloading a trailer of Palestine solidarity banners etc – they were there they didn’t ask us to move ‘gotcha’ is their answer they see protestors as the enemy.
When the cops have to pay out for pepper spraying and other dumb things they do illegally it is always confidential, that is wrong.