Posts by Gareth Ward
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"It is a despicable police tactic when the material has not even been sighted by those arrested or their lawyers and where the activists themselves will have to wait up to 18 months before having the chance to present their side of the story when the police evidence is tested in court."
Out of interest - what stops the accused from now presenting their side of the story in the same way? I presume their is sub-judice stuff in terms of official release by lawyer...
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No need for dawn raids unless you were aiming for drama.
Or believed you were coming up to arrest a bunch of people who had been training in military tactics with live ammunition
(Why does every post on here need a counterweight posted just to balance it out?!) -
He just ordered raids based on the terrorism suppression act, how could people be so easily confused?
The flipside of that argument being that he ordered raids based on the only law he could use, that he never named himself (presumedly some lowly paid civil servant invents legislation names?)
The insinuation of a comment like yours is that he used the act to use the word - seems a bit of a leap to me. "Gee, this isn't the right act to use but I'll ignore the others because this has a great name..."
/DevilsAdvocate -
When I was a boy I said things that I would be very very ashamed to have quoted back to me now. Angry young people say stupid stupid things.
Without picking on this particularly, this seems to be a common refrain.
Let's just re-iterate here that this is not just somebody saying angry things. This is a few people regularly saying angry things with others of a like-mind, and then training in military maneouvres with live rounds and Molotov cocktails.
There is a significant difference.
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Keen to hear Meurant's take on this now too actually...
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Then ensure Domestic aspect is included & strengthen Police role as domestic anti-terror agency - as opposed to SAS.
Possibly, but without any firsthand knowledge I can't bring myself to come down on the "cops did all this to influence legislation" side of things...
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Sure TSA not being passed
?? The amendment to that bill had overwhelming political support, was certainly going to pass...
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Does it occur to you that as you pour scorn on police evidence you're reserving the right to just make shit up for yourself?
That's it! I was trying to say the same thing to someone the other day but couldn't distill it as nicely as that.
"Oi, you know that conversation we had last Friday, well forget what I said and replace with..."
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RB: If this is the nature of the evidence, it's disturbing, but what charges it warrants other than the firearms ones, I'm not sure.
Which in itself seems disturbing - to my mind this sort of stuff has stepped over the "freedom of speech/freedom to be a wingut" line to something that I feel our police should have the ability to interrupt.
Perhaps firearms charges are enough, but if all those weapons had been registered ones, what would the police have been able to do?
(I only quickly followed some of this stuff in the other thread so apologies if it was covered there by Graeme et al)...I did think this was a bit of a stretch from the DP:
Those still facing firearms charges are entitled to a fair trial, but those trials are a year or more away. Revealing now what police found relating to the terrorism charges they wished to lay, but which the solicitor-general declined to authorise, will not influence those firearms cases.
Really? In a years time if I'm called up for jury duty on this stuff (touch wood) I don't think I'll be sitting there going "Tame Iti... Iti... yeah I vaguely recall something. Wasn't he on NZ Idol?" -
Ironically, much of the evidence presented in closed court is probably inadmissable on the firearms charges, so we may never get to hear it.
Will be interesting to see how much of this is revealed regardless, whether it be through police press conference (not sure how much they can legally say) or media leak.
Just so that the police can deflect criticism and let everyone know why they did this in the first place...