Comments on: The Policing Bill and officially ordered cowardice

By: Al Mansell

Al Mansell — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:07:41 +0000

Tom Lewis (17 years in CIB) foretold our present problems with the police 15 years ago in “Coverups and Copouts”.
His solution: a return to local cops.
At present, the police are “faceless people to the public at large. They are just people who turn up at in uniforms to record the details of a crime… when they are finished, they disappear once more. Why should the public trust them?…
Not so the local cop. They can talk to him in confidence because he is one of them.”

By: TumYum

TumYum — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:24:08 +0000

Well done Stephen, you have encapsulated what has for me been a growing sense of unease regarding the fundamentals in this area. For me it goes back to the Springbok tour (I was 18 then) and has been quietly nagging (and growing) ever since. It’s beyond clowns, speedgate, paintergate, emailgate and what I’m sure will be countless election finance issues. Its more than parole hearings, cell phones, smacking, sensible sentencing and revenue gathering. It’s a deeply fundamental debate about how we want to live. Hopefully you have laid a foundation for thoughtful, considered debate. I look forward to it. Thanks for kicking it off so well.

By: Chuck Bird

Chuck Bird — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:06:14 +0000

Now that Susan Couch has been allowed to sue Department of Corrections for damages maybe the Singh family be able to sue the police for gross negligency in carrying out their duty.

By: Jim Maclean

Jim Maclean — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:40:29 +0000

As always in these matters Stephen Franks has identified the issues, researched them well and summarised them brilliantly.
There will always be people with different opinions and ideas but for what it is worth, on this issue Stephen Franks speaks for me and he does it eloquently and well.
I could not care less what Howard Broad thinks, the attempt by the Police Executive to defend the indefensible in this case mean he should resign.

By: David French

David French — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:17:20 +0000

… Interestingly Stephen Franks drops a few of Richard Mayne’s principles from his extract: 4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective. 8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. 9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
These are, of course, as relevant as the others. Unfortunately the time has long gone when the ‘Met’ has widespread public support and certainly avoids such detailed principles in its current operations but a challenge to the New Zealand Police Commissioner Howard Broad is to identify what he thinks the police should be doing and how well he thinks it is doing it.
…
[David - Thanks, I should have done at first what I've now done and inserted a link to a site with various formulations. The post was (and is) too long, which was my reason for truncation]