A couple of days ago the Independent Police Complaints Authority released a report that criticised Police for taking a large number of photographs “with no clear and lawful purpose”. There is also a claim of racial bias, as 53 per cent of those photographed were Maori.
The response from the Police Commissioner has been along the lines of Yes we did the wrong thing – but never mind, eh?; the sort of response you’d expect from someone who knows they’re well and truly above the law and protected from up on high. After all, who are you going to complain to?
The response from the Police Association has been undignified and quite extraordinary. Chris Cahill’s infantile behaviour when interviewed by Sean Plunket – throwing a tantrum and hanging up – was just pathetic. Another one who is above the law and ‘protected’.
But the question which always should be asked: ‘Is there anything in it? Is it true?’ (A question almost never asked by a corrupt, bought and paid-for media.)
I give you a personal experience. I can only wish I was making this up.
In February 2015 we were having a summer holiday in Port Waikato: a lovely part of the world. My dearly beloved asked if I was interested in attending Waitangi Day at Waitangi itself, something the ‘Far Now’ head over from the Hokianga and do each year, apparently. Although not being overly fussed with Maori stuff, I did see the emblematic quality of being at Waitangi on Waitangi Day, so early on the sixth we headed off.
It is no secret that I am an elitist (but in a good way) and that very few people in NZ live like I do, so consequently I don’t have a great deal of personal experience of how “ordinary folk” live. That morning – 4am on Waitangi Day 2015 – I got the shock of my life to personally discover what is commonplace for a chunk of the population.
As I have mentioned before there is an age gap between me and my spouse; also, I was still a bit ‘tight’ from the night before (probably why I agreed to go to Waitangi!), so they did the driving whilst I lay in the back seat trying to sleep. Therefore visualise the scene: a young Maori man driving a car, a new Jaguar, at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning on the Auckland motorway. You can probably guess what happened next.
We were stopped at Bombay (all of one minute after getting on the motorway), Manurewa, Otahuhu, Greenlane, Westhaven, Smales Farm, Albany, Silverdale, Warkworth, Te Hana, Brynderwyn, Waipu, Whangarei (where the cop thought I had been kidnapped! Haha!) and Kawakawa. On each occasion, the Police were impolite, refused – point blank – to answer why we’d been pulled over and demanded to see proof of ownership of the car. My dearly beloved was searched for weapons, breath tested and asked impertinent questions. The whole caper was a huge pain in the neck.
Upon finally reaching Waitangi and meeting up with the ‘Far Now’, they all laughed about it (they’d been stopped a couple of times too) and just accept it as a sort of game and their lot. I was quite shocked and a bit shaken.
Had I complained, made a fuss to Mike Bush (and a couple of Cabinet minister friends who owed me huge favours) about the Police policy of racial profiling, I have absolutely no doubt the government and commissioner would have replied, ‘There’s no such policy.’