GUEST BLOG: Ross Meurant – MISSION CREEP
A commentator on TV suggests, MISSION CREEP.
“The new Armed Response Teams have been called out at 50 times the rate that Armed Offenders Squads were last year.
“The teams were deployed 75 times a day in the first five weeks of a six-month trial that started late October, data released under the Official Information Act shows.
I don’t have a problem with this unit.
The police tell us everything is tickety-boo.
“Police say the trial is going “really well”, the public is getting “good value”, and the teams have not fired a gun once. (Herald)
The danger however, is the gung-ho ill discipline output of too many cops in to many situations over the past few decades, which in my opinion, are prima facie manslaughter, creeps into our expectation of police service delivery.
For a quick review of police killings, take the time to view this 4 minute clip:
Some plus 30 police killings since I joined to police, have avoided scrutiny by a proper Court of Law.
As I’ve said so many times: the IPCA is not a court of law. It is a back-room sanitization unit.
Progressively, it has usurped the role of our Courts.
If police are not subject to rule of law sanction on their behavior and escape under application of rule of police as a substitute, New Zealand’s cherished democracy will be emasculated.
Democracy?
Parliament make the laws. Government departments administer the law. Courts scrutinize the legality of application of the laws.
The IPCA is not a Court.
Ross Meurant; a former high-ranking police officer, former Member of Parliament, formerly with commercial interests in Syria and Iran and currently Honorary Consul for an African state.
Worse, with the new gun laws, the police have written and publicly spruiked the law, they are demonstrably not independent of it.
Gun crime is already worse and worsening, as government was warned.
Armed response teams are the intermediate step to fully armed police which is a certainty, as, crazily, Police can make their own rules on this.
Minister Nash enjoys being Police minister a little too much and is captured by his department as the weak willed are -he is minister for police, not of police.(“I’ve got your back” he told them, what about civilians basic rights or his own gang infested electorate?).
A police employee just got jail time for repeat searches of police data and onselling the info to gangs.
The deputy commissioner (Clement) being touted as next commissioner to convicted drunk driver Mike Bush, is under investigation for interfering in an employment matter. In secret, no public findings to be released.
We badly need a sort out of Police top brass and real transparent oversight.
Could somebody with better access to statistics than myself, please let us know how many times “the covering up complaints against police authority” has actually severely penalised a serving police officer for anything?
I am inclined to more and more see you as the voice of reason and prior experience from which to speak authoritatively from, Ross Meurant.
Agree Wild Katipo. Honestly I see Ross Meurant as a bit of a wild man in the past, now with that experience and further maturity, able to put things in perspective and give insight into what is or is not going on in police circles. And I believe we need very much to make changes, good for the country and providing balance in procedures and outcomes. Our government has become smothered by the RW business-first, free market, highwayman ‘give-us-your-sovereignty-or-else’ coup and has to fight its way out to respond as we citizens would expect.
So true!
IPCA = It is a back-room sanitization unit.
As most of us know, not independent at all.
Well put Ross. I guess some older Daily Blog readers tread warily around you, including me, I have a motorcycle helmet with two baton dents in it that I wore near Eden Park, in Sandringham Rd 1981. But you give some good insight, and are an example of how any of us can reflected and change our world view.
The NZ Police obviously do much useful work, but their culture seems notoriously change resistant. We all should feel comfortable to approach Police members and talk to them but that is not the reality.