by frog
The Police are often criticised for looking after their own and covering up criminal or inappropriate behaviour by fellow officers. The nadir was the 2007 conviction of former Police Inspector John Dewar for covering up the original rape allegations by Louise Nicholas against former officers Brad Shipton, Bob Schollum and Clint Rickards.
So it was a breath of fresh air to see that seven Police officers were prepared to lay complaints and give evidence against West Auckland Sergeant Martin Folan, who was found not guilty yesterday of charges of assaulting prisoners in his custody.
Regardless of the outcome of the trial, it’s great to see Police officers prepared to stand up and challenge what they perceive to be inappropriate actions by their colleagues. The seven officers who testified in Folan’s case did so with courage and integrity in the face of the knowledge that some in the Police may question their loyalty.
They exemplify a change in Police culture I am sure we all want to see. I hope they get the support from the Police hierarchy and from their colleagues that they deserve, and that the not guilty verdict in this particular case doesn’t discourage other Police officers from doing the same.
Update: The Weekend Herald has learned two sergeants working in the Waitemata District are under investigation after claims they put pressure on some of the officers set to testify against Mr Folan.
It is understood they were trying to get the officers to change their mind about giving evidence.
Published in Society & Culture by frog on Wed, April 13th, 2011
Tags: Bob Schollum, Brad Shipton, Clint Rickards, John Dewar, louise nicholas, Martin Folan, police culture
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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Despite these seven ‘good cops’, the prosecution case wasn’t strong enough to convict. When the Prosecution Sergeants of NZ Police are prepared to make a strong enough case to convict, I’ll be prepared to allow that the culture has changed for the better. Until then, all I can see is that a case has been seen to be processed through the Courts, without, it appears, impeding the future progress of this officer ‘of long standing’ in his career.
Just like Clint Rickards, who spent his stand-down-on-full-pay leave studying law full-time at Auckland University, then was accepted by the Auckland Law Association to practice at the Bar in Auckland District Court. Hardly a career fail for a policeman, that.
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When you hear expressions like ‘police culture’ makes it sound like police are somehow above the law & MAYBE ‘getting away’ with bending & breaking the laws ?
I still wonder why the police union president (O’Connor) supports mandatory drug testing for New Zealand workers, but in the next sentence said it isn’t necassary for the police !
“why is it so ?”
Not wishing to ‘tar them all with the same brush’.. Kia-ora
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Just becasue a jury has not found the allegations of assault proven beyond reasonable doubt doesn’t meant the alleged assaults are deemed forever to have not happenned. Folan still faces an internal Police employment investigation and an inquiry by the Independent Police Conduct Authority – both of which have a lesser standard of proof.
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The above evidence is that there are good policemen.
Maybe one day I will see the light.
Tiki Tani was not the first entertainer to speak their mind and get arrested in the early sixties an American comedian Lenny Bruce got arrested for cracking this joke:-
“Hey did you guys know that if Jesus was crucified 26 years ago, all the Christians would be wearing electric chairs !!!”
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Katie. Here are some facts. Crown Prosecutors prosecute for the Police (and other government agencies) on all but the most minor matters, not Police Sergeants. They guy who prosecuted came up from the South Island, probably so that he knew none of the people involved in the trial. The Police absolutely hammer their own once they have a sniff of a bad apple (ever seen a cop charged with just one offence – no, they dig for more). Police and Crown Prosecutors hate to lose cases (which I suppose gives the likes of yourself the grounds for claiming they are always setting people up).
Biggest fact. A jury of people like you and I found him not guilty.
Yet you still manage to complain about the Police. Amazing, and typical of the Anti-police sentiment that runs through the Green Party.
Toad, you are right. He was found not guilty, rather than innocent. Although obviously the court is the forum with the scariest consequences.
.
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Some more facts.
I used to work in the public service in the 80′s as an MOT prosecution clerical assistant.
A friend of mine did the same job at Wellington Central Police station when it was still near the old Midland Hotel.
Between us we knew all the Wellington prosecution sergeants and senior sergeants.
I know exactly the calibre of person I am describing, I used to correct their mistakes before files went before the Court.
The public service has been heavily restructured since those days; MOT and Police were merged fairly early on, a lot of my old collegues were shunted straight across. I occasionally encounter them to this day.
Of course procedures exist so that errant officers don’t get investigated by the guys in their own district.
But they all went through Police College in Porirua to get into the job, they all go through the same inductions and refresher courses and the standard is pretty much the same anywhere in the country. Crown prosecutors are not that much different from the Police prosecutors, they are still engaged with maintaining the status quo and keeping the good name of the Police force and Justice system.
Do you recall the name John Dewar, tagged by frog to this post?
Convicted for perverting the course of justice, he was the detective in charge of investigating allegations against Clint Rickards over two decades, during which time he persistently, and with some ease, it seems, buried complaints* so that the investigation never went anywhere until stirred up by Peter Kitchin in 2007. That is, of course, inconvenient to your argument, but that’s reality; corruption is nasty, festering stuff that has consequences if not dealt with immediately.
[* by more than one woman, Louise Nicholas was not an isolated subject of Rickards' attention.]
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Katie
Considering the MOT-police merger happened 20 years ago, and you worked for the former organisation (whose enforcement staff were generally hated by both the public and the police) in a clerical position, you hardly seem to qualify as someone who can really comment with any authority about the internal operations of the NZ Police today.
It’s interesting you continue to overlook the fact that this latest guy who was charged was found not guilty by a jury of people like you and me, and that you still talk (in vague terms and without providing a shred of evidence) of conspiracies amongst police. Were the seven officers who gave evidence against their collegue and 12 Jo Blows randomly picked off the street who said he didn’t do it all in on it, Katie?
As for your comments about crown prosecutors etc, who do you think prosecuted those people you also continue to bang on about. The very same crown prosecutors you have just bagged (and that was after the police, who you also just bagged, gathered sufficient evidence to enable them to do so). So are they all in a big corrupt conspiracy? Surely John Dewar wouldn’t have ended up in the can if that was the case? Or once again, are you just not letting the facts get in the way of a your (thoroughly anti-Police) story.
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JJ, as you have deemed katie unqualified to comment, may I ask what makes you qualified?
The ball-basher walks free due to “unreliable” evidence from the good cops.
It’s great to see praise where praise is due, but perhaps the police need more lessons in what makes evidence reliable; although I would have assumed they already knew.
JJ, you make a comment that cops never get pinged for just one offence. My take on that is different from yours.
However we’d both agree that the NZ TV show police 10/7 looks a million times better than the US show cops.
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Clint Rickards : cleared of rape, working in the justice sector
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3673879/Clint-Rickards-working-in-Auckland-courts
Kelvin Powell : cleared of rape, still working in a senior role for police
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10488149
Graham Thomas : avoided drink driving charge, still working in a senior role for police
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10559332
Jon Moss : national ethics manager – yeah right – two criminal investigations in less than a year, working in a senior role in the justice sector
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3872364/Disgraced-cop-faces-criminal-inquiry
Dave Archibald : leaked official information to a rapists lawyer, has a senior role at the police college
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4057914/Top-job-goes-to-censured-officer
Gary Smith : top job in London to policeman who PNHQ knew acted unlawfully
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/4269055/Pope-knew-about-officers-history
PNHQ : those who covered for Smith and Moss
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4275186/Police-review-appointments-after-reports
Gary Smith again : now it turns out our representative in London is also a workplace sexual harasser …
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4288993/NZs-London-cop-had-been-accused-of-sex-harassment
And yet the police sex witnesses were denied compensation.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4010805/Police-sex-witnesses-denied-compensation
Detective McHattie : the police attitude towards child abuse is exposed by the actions of defective detective Mchattie and other senior police. They didn’t give a stuff, they did not allocate resources, and they only sprung into action when the media got onto the fact that hundreds of child abuse cases were not being investigated. They were more concerned by embaressment to the police than the crimes against the children ……..
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4668445/Police-fail-child-abuse-victims-report-finds
One group of names is missing from this police list of shame.
The creeps who keep promoting these rotten cops.
P.s big hat tip to justthefactsmam who compiled this list ………….
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Fin
A general knowledge gained from almost two decades with on and off involvement in the criminal justice system. Was the ‘unreliability’ of the evidence against ‘the ballbasher’ mentioned in the judges summing up, or is that your summing up because a jury of 12 did their civic duty and let him walk? Name a police officer charged with a single offence, and I’ll retract my comment. Look at the latest case, 7 charges or whatever it was, it is highly likely a couple of people made complaints and the others were discovered during their investigation. Agreed, it could be a lot worse.
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NZnative. Brilliant! To prove Police are ‘rotten’ you list a whole lot of names who have been weeded out BY THE POLICE. Doesn’t the list just demonstrate the police are policing themselves? No doubt you’ll have a theory that there is a lot more going on, but just no evidence to actually back it up. It’s the Green anti-police sentiment shining through once again.
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Damned if I do, damned if I don’t, Joe.
I publish a post praising the Police for getting something right and we still get comments accusing the Greens of being anti-Police. Some people just like to throw labels around. If the Police do something I think is right, I will praise them. If they do somethng I think is wrong, I will criticise them.
Just the same as I will for any other state agency, political party, business, NGO, lobby group etc.
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JJ, No need to retract your comment re cops on a single charge. I was just trying to make the point that another interpretation could be that if a cop commits only one offence, he or she is unlikely to be prosecuted. Your comment seems to back this up. Name a cop charged with just one offence.
Your argument supporting your belief that the police are policing themselves is like saying that since 2 of the LAPD cops who bashed Rodney King served time, the LAPD must be policing themselves.
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Congaradulations to NZ native and juast the facts man we need all the links possible.
Katie do you know how long the course is at the Police Collage? I was told it was about a year or nine months but I find that very unlikely.
The college is the place to weed them out as I believe thet there are criminals who will diliberately do a bee line for the Police force.
And we can all understand why can’t we?
In Britain there was a detective who used to hire himself out as an assassin, you know part time work , tax free.
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I’m interested to see that this thread has turned into a debate about Greens response to topics that require a certain amount of scrutiny rather than about police conduct.
I think there are a couple of good things that have happened lately, the new Police Commissioner does not want to arm police and is going to target under performers in the force. Although he does want Police to have greater access to arms, which can only lead to more shootings, I think Peter Marshall is an improvement on the last Commissioner.
If he actually manages to remove malingerers from the organisation, my opinion of the Police will improve. Until I see evidence of this, my opinion of the Police which is built on personal experience will remain low.
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Can’t argue with you there Todd. 9/10 New Zealanders probably couldn’t even tell you who Howard Broad is, and this was the guy who was at the helm when some of the ugly events of the past came back to haunt the organisation.
Even I’d have to admit that as they work to clean up their house having an independent body that doesn’t involve cops investigating each other would seem like a good idea. Whilst they have identified what NZnative has called ‘rotten’ individuals themselves (NZNative – if they hadn’t been weeded out you wouldn’t be naming them), something like the arrangement they have in Queensland would seem far more transparent than the current system.
Having said that, I strongly doubt even that would satisfy some of the anti-police conspiracy theorists who have commented above (although I guess it would give them the opportunity to come up with more complex conspiracies than ‘they all do the same courses together at the Police College’ – imagine that, Katie, members of a national police force all doing the same training at the same place!)
As for the gun issue. I think a survey of the police showed they didn’t want them either. But, as they say, you can’t take a knife (or a can of mace or even a Tazer) to a gunfight, so obviously there needs to be quick access to guns for the protection of themselves and the people like us when our neighbours go rogue.
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Drakula, the police college training lasts 19 weeks.
http://www.newcops.co.nz/application-process/police-college
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This is the scariest one:
Go to the link and you’ll see that Archibald deliberately and unlawfully supplied confidential Police information to a private investigator working for rapist Police officer Brad Shipton.
Archibald’s penalty: A promotion to Detective Inspector and being put in charge of training new cops. I’d like to laugh at the irony but I’m having to concentrate on fighting back the puke.
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frog says “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” “I publish a post praising the Police ….”
I think that’s because everybody can see that a story about a cop getting off assault charges is really a bad news story dressed up pretending to be a good news story.
It’s about as fake and transparent as a big burly, hairy chested, large moustached constable trying to pass himself off as a woman because he’s wearing a bikini.
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NZnative
‘Supplied’? Didn’t the article say the officer accessed information (it also didn’t mention ‘confidential’ like you did)? If it’s making you want to puke, a good part of that might be due the facts you are fabricating to embellish the story.
From the content of the article, I don’t think anyone is going to say ‘that sounds reasonable police behaviour to me’, however the man is a senior policeman who has probably done a lot of good for the community in his time, locking up people who burgle our houses, steal our cars, sell drugs to our kids etc etc – the ones we don’t want to run into ourselves. But who cares about that or the fact it was 5 years ago, just keep dwelling on the negative in the finest anti-Police tradition of the Green Party.
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To those opposed to “corruption/misuse of position”, these issues being dealt with is a good news story.
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“Three cheers for good cops.. ” BUT what to do about the rest ?? Maybe end the internal enquiries & go to EXTERNAL & INDEPENDANT enquiries ??then maybe a few might end up, being found Guilty & not just swept under the carpet ! Kia-ora
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It is understood they were trying to get the officers to change their mind about giving evidence.
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um..!..frog…!
shouldn’t ‘learned’ be ‘learnt’…?
from the sweating/heaving masses…ok..
but from a blogmeister..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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I would like to comment but my spelling is atrocious! The Jackal has a small segment about the Police in the latest Week that was:
http://thejackalman.blogspot.com/2011/04/week-that-was_15.html
PS Thanks for fixing the whoar.co.nz feed phil u
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“..PS Thanks for fixing the whoar.co.nz feed phil u..”
not guilty…a site upgrade was just done…it must have been him..
..glad you are enjoying it..
…and … what was wrong with it..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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For some reason blogger was rejecting the feed, although it was working as a feed into browsers. Looks like the site upgrade has indeed fixed it.
I expect to see heads roll over this one:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/new-zealand/news/article.cfm?l_id=71&objectid=10719681
The Weekend Herald has learned two sergeants working in the Waitemata District are under investigation after claims they put pressure on some of the officers set to testify against Mr Folan. It is understood they were trying to get the officers to change their mind about giving evidence.
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learnt only if you want to keep the irregular verbs as irregular (and British) as possible.
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/5331-ues-learned-vs-learnt.html
Seeing that ‘t’ on the end of a word where the “ed” ought to be triggers my built in spell-checker. The regularizing will have to continue for a long time before the built in spell-checker is the builded-in spell checker.
I don’t actually mind the spelling, I just wish New Zealanders would use all the vowels.
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A Tui moment for the Police:
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyID=194702
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that’s a american-southern turn of phrase..eh..?..
‘he done learned real good..’…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Strangely enough getting a beating from the cops can decrease your acquaintance with letters.
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Not only refreshing but unbelievable! And my thought would be that there are certainly more who would step forward if not threatened, ridiculed or just the thought that some day they may need a fellow officers backing but will not get it regardless of the circumstances and will become a sort of outcast amongst fellow officers.
To have a reputation like that (that precedes you everywhere you go)??? Takes a lot to step forward like this!
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Doing the right thing may be tough, but then again it is the right thing to do. Ethical behavior should always be commended.
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