Posts by Matthew Poole
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The Trade-me question will be what eBay does with it? They're only buying the name (they have the technology themselves) so the question is are they buying it to turf it (and introduce ebay.co.nz) or buying it as a portfolio play to continue to run as it stands with the odd eBay intiative tacked on the side?
The thought of eBay buying TardMe is almost too terrifying for words. The eBay interface is awful ! TM isn't exactly going to win a UI award, but it's still streets ahead of eBay.
I really can't see eBay management turning down the chance to dispose of the "one of the few Western territories in which the local auctioneering upstart shut out the giant eBay" moniker, either.Oh, and that clipping thing with italics, it's any character that comes after the close, not just spaces. It was quite happy to eat the exclamation mark. That's very broken.
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Jackie, you're correct, there was a rolling stop following him. That seems to be the standard (and obvious) procedure when pursuing someone who's armed and making use of the weapon. Lets AOS get in close while hopefully keeping the public out of the way. Normally works pretty well, though I imagine there will be some reconsideration of how to secure both directions of the motorway when the next one of these (this is the second hot pursuit on the NW motorway in the last three years, so I think it's a safe bet it'll happen again) occurs.
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Ross, at the point where the Skyline ran into the median barrier, the motorway is four full lanes wide, plus two generous shoulders. I know this with certainty because I drove through there on Monday and noted where the paint marks are. The spikes the police carry cannot be deployed over such a wide road. He came onto the motorway at Newton Road, as I understand it, which comes right into that very wide stretch.
Also, as I've said before, once the road has been spiked, before anyone else can pass through the spikes must be retrieved. That means backing off from the pursuit, possibly losing the suspect. That's not a great option. And, in any case, he would've just jumped the median barrier, as he did when he crashed, and things wouldn't have looked all that much different. You're assuming the spikes would've ended the pursuit. That's a big assumption, given how many people have continued to drive whilst showering sparks from the rims after the tyres have totally given up the ghost and been left in pieces on the road.
The shots hit close enough that he got shrapnel wounds. And since it sounds like the target had suddenly starting moving in a different direction, following Mr Neville's braking, getting that close isn't bad going.
Pray tell, what're your qualifications to make these judgements? Or are you just another armchair "expert" who thinks that, because he thinks he can see something in hindsight, it should've been blatantly obvious to the IC who was in the thick of it?
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Too lazy to check if it's been mentioned already, but the thing that's bothered me is that I took till yesterday to officially take statements from the officers.
That's not that unusual. A formal, recorded statement is often not taken until two or three days after the event, and in this case there was a long weekend to bugger things up. The officers involved will have done their notes immediately after the event, and probably been informally interviewed by CIB. The formal interview is done with a lawyer, fully recorded, etc. Setting those up doesn't happen instantly, and lawyers don't like working weekends.
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the then Police Complaints Authority (which may still be ongoing?)
The PCA completed their investigation, and found that Abbott's shooting was justified. Just like every other investigation. The IPCA has now opened its own investigation, with a purview that includes whether or not all options were pursued, amongst other things. It's considered to be their demonstration that they really are independent, rather than just a renamed-and-prettied-up PCA, and a way of stamping the IPCA's mark.
Of course, one hopes that they don't persecute Abbott yet again. They potentially could, since they can make recommendations for disciplinary action (obviously a prosecution is out, since he's been acquitted already), but I can think of few courses of action more divisive, unhelpful and destructive than doing so.I quite like the idea of a grand jury to decide if certain crimes of significant public interest should be prosecuted. As a minimally-considered group of limitations, I would suggest any corrupt practices offence by an elected official (thinking specifically of the Field case, since it's been mentioned already), and any offence by a police officer that carries a jail sentence of 14 years or longer. That rules out the garden-variety assaults, keeps in the aggravated offences, serious sexual offences, and murder/manslaughter. Since they can recommend a lesser prosecution, the officer responsible for Friday's shooting could still be put before a grand jury and subsequently charged with careless use of a firearm, or even not prosecuted at all, despite potentially being charged with manslaughter (and thus under the hypothetical grand jury's purview).
Such limitations would see a grand jury convened only a handful of times each year. The biggest challenge would be the logistics of such an infrequently-utilised body, since it could be convened in any part of the country with a High Court, but wouldn't be meeting in any particular place. The three cases that've been mentioned in this post, Abbott, Field, and last Friday, would've required a grand jury in each of New Plymouth, Wellington (Field was charged in Wellington, wasn't he?), and Auckland. Auckland and Wellington would probably see more than most others, with their respectively large population and role as the centre of national government, but that doesn't preclude other centres from having need of the services of a grand jury. Corrupt local body politicians can happen anywhere (the fact that it really doesn't is pretty incredible, and a testament to the integrity of the people involved), as can possibly improper conduct by the police. Should probably add in SFO prosecutions for matters involving public funds as another matter for this notional grand jury.And I'll now shut up and go to bed, before I type something silly.
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Not that I dislike variety, but you have to wonder just how much value deregulation and "competition" have given us.
Wash your mouth out! The market is our saviour and brings only sunshine, butterflies and ponies!
And now to return you to our non-parallel-universe's programming...
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My only beef with ramp signals is Gilles Ave. It's pushed the motorway's congestion out into the surrounding suburbs for over a kilometre. It's ridiculous. St Mark's Rd screws up Mauranui pretty bad, but it's possible to get around that. Getting around Newmarket when Gilles is jammed is incredibly painful.
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Good. I want them to. better that than a police force which feels itself legally unaccountable for its actions.
I want them to be aware of it, and they are, but I don't want it to be the thing at the forefront of their thoughts when they're deciding whether or not to pull the trigger as I'm being held hostage. Which is a likely outcome if this officer is prosecuted as arbitrarily as you are demanding.
It was interesting that, even in the face of increasing violence toward them, support for general carry diminished amongst police officers. There's a suspicion on the part of the people who conduct that particular survey for the union that it's because of the incredible hell that descends upon any officer who uses lethal force. Had Abbott pondered his possible legal fate for another second, it's entirely like that it would've been he, not Wallace, who was buried. Without debating the merits of the shooting, I have far less sympathy for the death of a person who charges a police officer while wielding a weapon than I do for a police officer who dies at the hands of said person. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Consider, before you starting jumping up and down and demanding that the police be held accountable, how rare police shootings are in this country. In 150-ish years of policing, they've shot fewer than 30 people, even with Friday's tragedy. That is not a body that needs to be reminded that they can't use lethal force with impunity.
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Are there still (or are there no longer) concerns about the independance of the Authority?
I'm sure there are still concerns, if only because it's one statutory body investigating another, but the people who have those particular concerns also tend to be concerned about whether or not their tin foil hats conform to the latest fashions :P
The Police Complaints Authority, as much as it was claimed to be independent from the Police, still used cops to investigate cops, relied on internal police investigations to source much of its material, and was within the Police structure. The IPCA (I also thought it was Complaints, not Conduct, but the Act has Conduct both in its title and in the section where the Authority's name is established) is actually independent from the Police, not just as a matter of PR fiction, and that's as much as we can ever hope for.
As for the public's willingness to digest this change, it remains to be seen. If the IPCA comes back with yet another vindication of Abbott (yes, they're reviewing Waitara), I imagine they'll remain suspect in the eyes of many for as long as it takes for the current generation to die off. Not much can be done about that.
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The Independent Police Conduct Authority Amendment Act 2007 amends the Act that was previously called the Police Complaints Authority Act 1988, including the title (which is a little Orwellian, to me).
Yeah, it occurred to me just after I posted that maybe they'd just renamed and altered the PCA Act. 'tis a bit Orwell, isn't it? Though I guess if the former statute was sufficiently close to their intended outcome it makes more sense to alter it than to draft something from scratch and repeal the old one.