Hard News: Bad men
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But wait, there's more
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Getting PERFed on dubious grounds... 200K
Getting your colleagues to pay you for damaging their reputations by association... priceless -
plenty of chalk scrawled everywhere on the walk to work this morning.
big marker writing on the policy hq too.
make me think, a few years back ird caught a lot of flak from rodney hide about allegedly driving some businessmen to suicide with demands they pay their taxes.
i was overseas, but apparently it was pretty incessant.
the result was something of a 'road to damacus' experience for the ir, and they've substantially changed their organisational culture to prevent that type of allegation being levelled again.
maybe a good outcome of all the shit these useless fecking cops are taking will result in a better, more accountable police force.
you can't help but think that's a good thing.
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The Police will have a lot of work to do in order to regain trust lost after these cases, whether or not they were at fault or culpable.
I suspect they will have to implement changes at the training level too, sort of like when the legal profession made Legal Ethics a compulsory paper for all those students graduating after 1999. They may even have to change their branding, now that its been co-opted by the protesters.
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But we're talking about events that happened in the 80s. Since then the Police have changed much as NZ society has changed. It's not like other NZ institutions like rugby clubs don't have their own skeletons from that era. At least the Police are facing up to theirs.
These were a small group of cops from a particular time, there's no reason to make this a more blanket condemnation of 'Police culture". The Police were not responsible for the non-disclosure of pervious convictions and they were the ones who investigated Rickards and co.
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Sure this was a long time ago, and quite possibly a small group of police, but there seems to be a perception that the Police are in some way responsible. This can be seen through the marchs on the Police stations in Auckland / Wellington, the poster campaign, and the chalk in Wellington.
So whether or not it is indicative of police today or not doesn't really matter, unless the Police either can clearly separate themselves from the issue, or make visible signs of change.
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i was at the auckland march last night and the mood seemed pretty positive. even the very few police there on bikes doing crowd control were treated well and some went out of their way to make it clear it wasn't anti-all-police, and one speaker who did try to make it that got heckled by the crowd. having said that it must have felt wierd for the cops there to see such people power against their former Kommander.
Jim Bagnall's Union of Failures was there too in their little joy bus, riling up the crowd who fortunately didn't take the bait, with loudhaled slogans like 'Nichols should get 10yrs" and 'Louise was just a naughty girl just like Clint was a naughty boy'. they were lucky not to be mobbed by the crowd really.
the majority were women but quite a few men, and the demographic looked pretty middle-class and ordinary, not the so-called 'radical' profile that the msm likes to portray all protestors as. i'd say there were 600-700 at its peak.
having said that, while the TV3 late news coverage was ok the TV1 coverage was appalling, focussing entirely on the conflict in the WN march. there was no such conflict at AK although the two distinct events were blended so it appeared they both went the same way. the one person they showed speaking at the AK event was one of the most fervent, peripheral, and the one person who was heckled because clearly many in the audience didn't agree with her views. oh, and the TV1 coverage reckoned there were about 250, which there probably was when their news crew took off for ponsonby road before the march actually started. -
you might want to take off those rose tinted glasses there neil.
cops using their uniform to access women is as common today as ever.
sexual harrassment of women, by cops, continues to this day. i've seen the police files on this in a previous occupation. they filled a room 2m by 5m from floor to ceiling, and dated from the 1970s to 2000s.
here's hoping current levels of intolerance of this behaviour within the police force continue, and lead to permanent organisational culture change.
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I was at the Auckland march too Riddley, interesting to read your perceptions as you saw some different things from me. That'll serve me right for being late.
Thanks too for reporting on the news coverage, which I missed. Not surprising that the media has focused on a small amount of conflict and not the bigger issues, but still disappointing.
For those who have commented that they hope this is a turning point for the culture of the police, I fervently share your wish. You can call me naive if you want, but this really must change, and I just find it far too depressing to consider that it might not.
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Thank you for the report Riddley. The march was a huge and sometimes very difficult organising effort by a small group of people. I too was disappointed by the msm's "nothing really happened" reports.
In the end though, the most important thing was a very large group of people (for many it was their first march), I'd agree about 600-700 at its peak, who had a really inspiring and empowering experience. I'm not sure the msm knew quite how to deal with a very large, non-confrontational and well-organised community action. But the people who came certainly did.
So chur!
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here's a link from indymedia with pics of the AK march, take a look at what TV1 considers '250 people'
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I still remember the day--back when I was young and idealistic--that I first saw television coverage of a protest I had been involved in. I was utterly astonished (and quite upset) that the portrayal bore no resemblance to events as they had actually occurred.
Excellent education though. Maybe protesting and then studying subsequent media coverage should be added to the curriculum.
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