crime

police

NRT: More police crime

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 26 comments

No Right Turn reports on a case that is symptomatic of just how out of control the police in NZ are getting. The response of Wellington’s Tactical Policing Unit was both completely disturbing in its use of violence to try to create the type of incident that they were expecting. The police lying, not only to the public, but also to themselves about the actions is even worse. If there are no prosecutions and stiff sentences for the officers involved, then it is time to start actively initiate a program of private prosecutions of individual police.

Operation 8: Te Putatara

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 31 comments

As the resulting court battles die away and the suppression orders lift, the level of sheer dumb stupidity and outright silly paranoia of the police and other agencies involved in Operation 8 becomes clearer. It is time to start examining the officers in the police who brought so much dishonour and disrespect to their force. And where better than Te Putatara who has a post up which details a raid who had a court examination of the validity of the bloated and illegal search warrant to court – while a raid was in progress.

Rob Gilchrist on Sunday

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 28 comments

The Sunday programme this evening has Rob Gilchrist, police spy and provocateur, breaking his silence about the decade he spent amongst mostly peaceful […]

NRT: Laws are for little people – again

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 22 comments

No Right Turn looks at the police decision on the unlawful GCSB interceptions of DotCom’s communications. Of course getting the police to investigate their own requests for the GCSB to perform an unlawful activity is like putting a stoat in charge of kiwi chicks. Perhaps a private prosecution of the GCSB and the police would be a more productive.

GCSB protest – Auckland tonight

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 145 comments

To say that the GCSB law changes are misguided is the kindest possible interpretation, but many people including myself tend to view them as being quite malevolent. They aren’t going to provide any more security for citizens and residents here. But they are going to provide more security for incompetents in the security and police forces from both public and legal scrutiny. There are series of protests planned, and one in Auckland tomorrow. Updated – packed.

Drones over NZ

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 33 comments

News today that American military drones have passed through our airspace. Along with our own military and police drone projects, looks like our skies are going to be getting crowded.

Police Association offers a recipe for dead cops

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 122 comments

In December, a cop had his taser taken off him and fired at him. The Police Association said the solution is for cops to be armed. Judith Collins got it right, “if that was a gun [not a Taser] we’d probably be going to a funeral, actually, for a police officer”. On Friday, an armed cop had his gun taken off him. The Police Association’s answer: cops should pull their guns earlier.

Politics & Pleasure: TV 2012

Written By: karol
Date published: - 32 comments

We tend to rework reality, included political knowledge and understanding, into a basic (fictionalised) story structure, with villains, heroes, and values absorbed from pleasurable forms of fiction, including TV.  This is a look at the political values embedded in some popular TV dramas.

Who guards the guardians?

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 8 comments

It is poor timing for an extension of surveillance powers. Cases where the police have flouted the law have been coming thick and fast recently. Without Ministerial oversight it has been up to the courts to provide balance, but that’s a method of last resort, and very much an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

Protecting criminal cops

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 14 comments

Detective Inspector Grant Wormald and his Organised and Financial Crime Agency appear to be a rogue police unit that thinks it’s above the law. They acted illegally in the Dotcom raid, they had GSCB illegally spy on Dotcom, Wormald appears to have perjured himself, and, now, there’s the illegal fake prosecution that has led to 21 accused criminals going free.

Banks suppressed Police statement

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 48 comments

Remember how Banks’ Police report came out and the statement he gave to the Police was blanked out? And remember how Banks said it was the Police’s choice, not his? Yeah, well that was a lie. Even on the most generous reading of Banks’ words, he was trying to mislead the media. What’s Key’s rule? “A Minister who lies or misleads about his actions would lose his confidence”

“Privacy assured!” Politics, the police & surveillance

Written By: karol
Date published: - 27 comments

Public trust in the police is at a new low. But what of the trust in our government?  How much collusion is there between the police, government, spy agencies and foreign governments? However, citizens are also using the technologies of the surveillance society to hold the government and state authorities to account.

NRT: Convenient amnesia

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 115 comments

What can one say to the latest. No Right Turn says…..
“So, having told everyone that he wasn’t briefed about the Kim Dotcom spying fiasco until September, it now turns out that John Key was told about it back in February. ” … “That whistling noise is the PM’s credibility shrinking even further. His amnesia is just too convenient here to be believed”

Updated: Added links to his next two posts.

Where are the resignations?

Written By: James Henderson
Date published: - 87 comments

John Key refuses to accept any responsibility for what his spies get up to. The only point of democratic responsibility for our spies doesn’t monitor them and won’t take the blame for failing to do so. He won’t fire a corrupt, lying minister, either. The rot is spreading to the public service. There has been not one resignation, not a single one, due to the Dotcom debacle.

Neazor report proves inadequate cover for Key

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 83 comments

Labour has written to Key calling for a much wider-ranging investigation into the Dotcom spying affair than Neazor’s narrow, tell-us-nothing-we-don’t-already-know report. They would have been better to go straight to the Auditor-General. The Greens have gone for the established illegality and called in the cops on the GCSB – cleverly citing the same offence Key claimed in the teapot tapes.

Banks must now submit correct return

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 53 comments

John Key is wrong, John Banks has broken the law. He just did not get prosecuted. The return of donations he signed and submitted in 2010 is false, as the Police have stated. He should now correct it, or he is still in breach of the law.

Equal before the law?

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 53 comments

Police will not lay charges over the so-called banks.com saga. Assistant Police Commissioner Malcolm Burgess held a press conference this afternoon at Police National Headquarters in Wellington. Minister John Banks would be issued with a warning over the matter, Burgess said. While he only received a warning, Banks’ actions were illegal and future occurrences were likely to be prosecuted.

Nat conference protests

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 58 comments

This weekend the National Party is holding its annual conference at SkyCity (how appropriate) in Auckland. Protests are planned.  Be careful, keep it peaceful.

Police cuts

Written By: Bunji
Date published: - 41 comments

So the plan to screw down police wages isn’t working, and National are having to keep going with their other approach.  But not everyone is taking death by 1000 cuts lying down.

Justice denied for Dotcom

Written By: Zetetic
Date published: - 10 comments

Shades of the Urewera shambles as Dotcom’s extradition drags out. It’ll be a year between the raid and his day in court. Meanwhile, they’re using extra-judicial punishment: bankrupting him by freezing his assets while his legal bills stack up. Going to end in Dotcom not being extradited because the evidence against him was gathered illegally. Then, he’s going to sue the Crown for millions.

Reasonable doubt

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 52 comments

There’s some very wrong with the Police. A second murder trial in a month ending in acquittal (the Qwaze case wasn’t even a homicide). A case based on evidence that was never going to make it past reasonable doubt. This comes on top of the increased politicisation of the police and the grounds for two over-the-top armed raids being destroyed in court.

What did Key really know about Dotcom?

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 57 comments

We know that the Police overstepped their authority following their Hollywood wannabe raid on Dotcom’s home. They used invalid warrants to take property of Dotcom’s that they weren’t entitled to, and gave that data to the FBI. Now, we learn that Key’s office was involved in advising the Department of Labour on shutting down a leaked email.

Time for Govt to bring the cops to heel

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 53 comments

Looks like the Police have cost us a fortune in an inevitable lawsuit from Kim Dotcom. Not only were the warrants they used to raid his house illegal, they took things they weren’t entitled to even under those illegal warrants. They aggravated this by playing FBI wannabes, causing distress and public humiliation. Then they gave their illegally obtained information to the Yanks.

Pike Road?

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 10 comments

A strong safety warning today about sheeptruck disaster met Ministerial indifference from Associate Transport Minister Simon Bridges. He said Australian legislation to promote safety and fairness in the road transport industry was not needed here because “New Zealand already has a system of work time requirements to help manage the risk of fatigue”. More infamous last words from a National politician – but the police are really worried.

Trash talk

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 34 comments

So the first car has been crushed. While ministerial grandstanding abounds, a criminologist describes it as “vindictive, malicious, petty and an undignified way of dealing with the problem”.

Police Liaison = Police Trap

Written By: rocky
Date published: - 45 comments

Last week I wrote about how the mass arrest of protesters last week was planned by police from the beginning. A couple of days later I was told that 10 minutes before the march a Police Liaison Officer spoke to protest organisers and stated that police were only there to facilitate the march. I have now managed to track down the video of this conversation.

Police fail to incite riot

Written By: rocky
Date published: - 142 comments

The police have a number of different strategies for dealing with protest marches. Each has its own known likely result and the police […]

Lessons from Greece

Written By: rocky
Date published: - 229 comments

Update 6.45pm: One of lawyers acting for those arrested has just been told by police that everyone arrested will be released without charge in the next couple of hours. That excludes 4 people who have refused to cooperate, presumably by refusing to give their details to police.

Update 9:09pm: John Darroch’s photos from today.

The thinner blue line

Written By: Zetetic
Date published: - 19 comments

National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.

Decriminalising pot?

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 96 comments

With pot related arrests down by half over the last eighteen years, the police have been accused of “decriminalisation by stealth”. It’s probably time to have the debate properly.