Police pay $10,000 in compensation to PSNA Campaign Co-ordinator John Minto
The non-confidential payout received this week follows negotiations after last year’s IPCA (Independent Police Conduct Authority) report finding that police use of pepper spray against Mr Minto at a protest on 6 February 2024 was “excessive use of force and therefore unjustified”.
The Authority also found that Minto’s “arrest for obstruction was unlawful” and “that the force used against you and your arrest were both unlawful”.
“I’m pleased this issue is now resolved but disturbed that even after the IPCA report the police have not accepted responsibility for what in this instance was thuggish behaviour” says Minto.
“The police say they don’t accept the IPCA report findings and conceded only that they didn’t provide “aftercare” following their gratuitous use of pepper spray on several people in the protest”
“I’m writing to the Police Minister to ask for legislative change so IPCA findings become legally binding on police”
The $10,000 will be donated to PSNA to advocate for a one-state solution to Israel’s hundred-years of land theft, dispossession and colonial violence against the Palestinian people.
Under a one-state solution everyone living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea would have equal rights under a democratic constitution where ethnic and religious rights are protected. (Note: Israel has made a two-state solution impossible by building hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements housing more than $700,000 Israelis across the occupied Palestinian Territories)
John Minto
National Campaign Co-ordinator
Once they put their glasses on and their gloves you know pepper spraying will be on.
Pomarie
I was at Lyttelton on that day, they had one rogue cop in amongst them. I saw the pepper spraying that that one rogue cop did not just to Minto but a number of others. It was gratuitous violence he looked across to a young pony tailed female cop and winked and then sprayed it was ‘look at me I’ve got the big one’. It was not a protest organised by Minto at all and he wasn’t ever blocking the road and the rogue stood on the road and told two other cops to go on to the footpath about 30 minutes later and arrest Minto. Minto has footage of all of this and the IPCA have viewed all that I gather. And how is it they can just ignore the findings of the IPCA – what a mockery that is.
Congratulations John.
Good.
The one state solution, if explained as mentioned here, is a winner. But as we all know, we only get told what they, the powerful, wants the world to know.
You have done well to get something from the police although their ignorant attitude afterwards is no surprise as they seem to think that they are infallible. Like countryboy says it should have been more.
The police (from the Greek word ‘Polis’ meaning society) have long maintained that they are poilitically neutral.
In reality the police have always been political.
The police force of any nation is an organised paramitlary body paid by the state, tasked with maintaining social order and preserving the status quo. As such the police are by nature a conservative political force in society.
A separate body of officers tasked with maintaining social order distinct from the army is a relatively recent historical development.
The first civilian police forces were created following the end of feudalism and the rise of British imperialism.
In feudalism the army is the main realisation of organised state power. British imperialism needed a permanent civilian force to protect British trading interests at home and abroad.
The organisation of the first modern police force as we know it, began in the late 18th and early 19th century tied to the industrial revolution, and especially the rise of the British Empire.
in 1791 Lord Cornwallis (Governor-General of India). Stripped Indian feudal landlords (zamindars) of their powers and created a distrint organisation led by a Superintendent of Police and local native officers called darogas.
The first record of a civilian police force in England was in the heart of the British Empire, and capital city London.
The first ever recorded separate organised force, distinct from the army, in England, was the Thames River Police, a private marine police force founded in 1798 to put a stop to the rampant cargo theft and fraud along the docks.
Beginning as a private force for the protection of British traders especially the East India Company’s warehouses and ships, the template followed throughout the British Empire.
In 1797, one year before the organisation of the Thames Police Force, English magistrate Patrick Colquhoun’ published, ‘A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis’.
Before Colquhoun’ treatise, there was no organized professional police force anywhere in England, not even in the Capitol of the Empire.
Colquhoun’s Treatise detailed various categories of crime common in London at the time, theft, burglary, gambling, and illegal trading, representing a big financial loss to the Briish Empire.
The early success of the Thames River Police and the spread of Colquhoun’s ideas led directly to the formation of The London Metropolitan Police, founded in 1829 by Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, officers were nicknamed “Bobbies” or “Peelers” after him.
The first formalized, regular police force in India was established in 1791 by Lord Cornwallis (Governor-General of India). He stripped local landlords (zamindars) of their policing duties and created a district-based system led by a Superintendent of Police and local officers called darogas
The British Empire’s first official organised police force distinct from the British Army and Navy, in the Southern Hemisphere was founded in 1840 by Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson in New South Wales to maintain order in the new colony.
New Zealand Armed Constabulary were first founded in 1867, and formed the basis of the civil, unarmed New Zealand Police Force founded in 1886.
Since their first inception as a professional paid force in this country by the British Empire, the Pirimana first role is protect imperialism. Hence the harsh and discrinatory policing of protests against colonialist atrocities in Gaza.
The police know instincively what side they are on, and it is not yours.
The word police is derived from the word politics.
Police’ from the Greek word politeia (citizenship/government), evolved into Latin as politia (civil administration), then Middle French as police (public order/government). In its earliest English usage, it meant “civil administration” or “public order” rather than a law enforcement force.Political / Politics: Descends from the Greek word politikós (of, for, or relating to citizens). This became the Latin politicus, and was later adopted into Middle English as politike before developing into the modern English “political”. Police and politics share the exact same foundation (polis). The meaning of “police” shifted from meaning “government administration” to “law enforcement” WikipediaA police force may also be referred to as a police department, police service, constabulary, gendarmerie, crime prevention, protec…
From Wikipedia
Police – Etymology, Origin & Meaning 1530s, “the regulation and control of a community” (similar in sense to policy (n.1)); from the French word police meaning organized government.
Online Etymology DictionaryEtymology and Evolution of Politics | Political Science and Police. ref. responses may include mistakes. Learn more
Thanks Pat, worth the read.
Go you @ John Minto and FUCK them. Should’ve been $100k or more.