A few bad apples becomes 20

A few bad apples.

It’s a few bad apples.

Don’t judge all the Police this way, it’s a few bad apples.

Well, those few apples suddenly became 20…

McSkimming fallout: ‘About 20’ cases in review of police devices

…the most insane part of the Mcskimming’s scandal (apart from senior officers protecting him, apart from the cover ups, apart from keeping the civilian Government in the dark, apart from actually charging the complainant) the most insane part was that his besatiality and child porn use would never have been discovered if he hadn’t been investigated.

This has led to a quick look at Police using their phones and laptops and that quick once over has discovered 20 other cops.

There’s no way it is just 20 others, but the ‘few bad apples’ mantra can’t start becoming double digits, that’s hard for the bosses to cover up.

The truth is that it’s been a ‘few bad apples’ in a system that makes bad apples.

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?

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.

It’s just a few bad apples.

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