Trade Me simplicity....

If the country wants a change in Police culture, I suggest it looks much closer at the problem. Lopping off a few boils won't clear up the disease, nor will any dose of castor oil. The Police culture we all blame for the excessive use of power has it's roots much deeper and more widely spread throughout our community than anyone has pointed out todate. It is in all of us. We expect the cops to do the filthiest work, but we abuse them and threaten them as they do it, and afterwards when they present their findings in court. We pay them peanuts to risk their lives, their marriages, their psyches, we let the media hang them out to dry so we can watch them cry real tears and if they don't we name them incompetent country cops and revile them. We let our children race them on our streets, and screech when someone dies. We challenge them, make 'beating' them a national sport, but still we call for them when we need some big strong braveheart to come save us from our neighbours.
It isn't the Police culture we should be worried about. It's our own.
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oh_hunnihunni (1188 ) 10:32 am, Wed 19 Jan #7



Here we have the ultimate excuse for why we have a Police culture under siege, it's the fault of the people in general. How pathetic and simplistic to propose that the country should accept an endemic culture of 'looking out for one's own kind' in the Police because of general proposals about the unpleasant jobs they are tasked with doing and our reliance upon them. The Police are not forced to join, they are not gang pressed into the force, they apply and if accepted make an oath after training. One cannot for a second anticipate that the new entrants have any misgivings about some of the worst aspects of their job, or that they have been lulled or conned into some false expectation of what the job will be.

So why then does the writer above suggest it's isn't the Police Culture that the public should worry about but rather the public should worry about their own. Is this dimwit suggesting that to obtain first class and community conscious Policing the community must lift it standards. Or that good policing is a reward only for communities that lift the standard of their culture to some unidentified level, in order that the Police will then deign to rid themselves of a culture that has been identified within the Police itself and marked to be removed? Are we about to enter an age when only those that have 'changed' their culture and have proof of such will be able to rely on help from the Police as this idiot seems to suggest. Are we to recognise that bad Policing is the result of being a 'bad' community?

The attitude of the writer above is an effort to put NZ into third world status where only the rich or 'good' will be provided for by the Police who in fact will inherit a paternalistic role over the good and bad they 'see' in society. Excuse me lunkhead that is exactly the problem and to endorse it is to victimise the public and disassemble law and order and the fundamental rights of democracy and freedom. It makes me wonder how far we have really come when some idiot message boarder quotes a few random examples of the accepted role of the Police before turning that to say we have what we deserve, or we get what we deserve - I'd like to see the legislation that says that.

Broad and Pope were given (probably the result of a serious misjudgement at the time) the opportunity to stop the back slapping of their mates into promotion, or reward for errors, promoting the wrong people for the wrong reasons and they blew it. In my opinion the project was never going to work, first of all because it was always going to be questioned how someone that formed part of the problem was going to be capable of fixing it. Already shown as to having never been willing to do anything about the culture during long Police careers. And secondly it seems ultimately stupid to presume they had the skills or capacity to implement something so far out of their career experience and with them known to already being in an environment where they'd overlooked or promoted the things they would be tasked with changing. Come to think of it, that decision was just about as dumb as blaming the public as the writer does above.

But of course all is not lost, wise heads are at work and the push for culture change in the Police has lopped off the heads of those representative of the culture that has been identified as in need of change, I hope the lessons now learnt at the top filter their way down and union resistance or 'old school' resistance is kicked to the kerb, more women are involved and promoted, promotions are on merit, difficult Police not 'promoted' to desk jobs in Wellington to get them away from areas where their poor performance has made the jobs of others more difficult. Also not least to forget that the rank and file of the Police are supported, able to speak out, complain when necessary, don't feel pressured not to report misconduct - in fact do as a normal part of business, no cover ups for anything and a removal of the 'elitism' aspect identified in the most recent report of the rank and file seeing the admin as out of touch.