Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Commissioner of Police responds to Ross Muerant.

In what might be a first Police Commissioner has replied by the way of an open letter to former MP and Police Officer Ross Muerant, taking issue with an article published in North and South in which Ross Muerant commented about police 'culture' as destructive.

Quite quickly in the letter Commissioner Marshall seeks to reject Muerant's call for the Thomas case to be re-opened, he says that Muerant should know that unsolved murders always remain open. Good point, if but self-serving. Marshall has refused to act on a 'submission' by Chris Birt that seeks Norma Demler be questioned and investigated as to her alleged sighting on the Crewe farm after the murders and before the police were called, and additionally on her claims as to when she arrived in the district, later marrying the slain Jeanette Crewe's father Len, and taking a role in the administration of the dead couple estate. Peter Marshall reported to Chris that Norma denied the claims and that he was not going to take it further.

Commissioner Marshall makes some general comments about what Muerant didn't achieve in his police career, which I expect is meant to give greater weight as to what the Commissioner says as compared to the former officer. It might surprise the Commissioner to learn that people judge an argument or information on its merits not by comparing the length of service in the police of two opposing proponents.

He says that little can be gained by 'dancing on the graves' of former senior Police and calls the interest in why a previous Commissioner Bob Walton, ordered his staff not to interview (effectively investigate) Norma Demler despite the sighting of her on the dead couple farms, 'an untimely attack.' Actually, I didn't see it as an attack at all, I see it clearly as in the public interest. I note a common characteristic when people have a miscarriage of justice lumped on them, as the late Vivian Harrison did, and as the Crewe's daughter Rochelle has, those that have failed to act are defended while the victims continue to be ignored.

I'm sure Peter Marshall knows that it is on Police files that Walton ordered that Norma Demler not be investigated. What is untimely is that she remains un-investigated under successive Commissioners, including now, Peter Marshall. It's clear that Marshall doesn't like what Muerant admits, it is also clear that Muerant is factual and his intention is not to dishonour anybody because he has been remarkably candid in admitting what he himself did in the police and which was overlooked or seen as part of the culture. Peter in using time as a 'cure all' neglects to note that the Thomas case is of another time and fails to realise that is one of the disturbing factors by those intimately injured by the events is that time is being used against them. That somewhere the thought is harboured that the sooner they are all dead and silent the case will die from memory - when of course it will not, and part of what is driving that is that is the awareness that time is being used as a weapon against truth.

Peter has within his power the right, the duty, to open this case again, to open the files and present them for anyone who should so apply under the Official Information Act. The fact that Peter refers to his case as historical is good reason that it should be opened for analysis, not continued to be closed down and every word released like a painful tooth extraction. Open the books, what harm can be done more than an innocent man spending a decade in prison, his ex wife going to her grave never being apologised to for being 'accused' as an accomplice after the fact to murder, and for a child, now a woman, who has appealed that the deaths of her parents be properly investigated.

In closing I note, that the Commissioner and others often refer to the amount of time spent on the Crewe case, what they fail to note is that by far the majority of that time was in defence of a corrupt investigation.

3 comments:

  1. It is introverted, self protecting and lacking objectivity. It is a culture which looks after itself and has a certain view of how life should proceed. The "them and us" ethos becomes tangible. Bigoted and intolerant. Few of its officer corps are university graduates and even fewer hail from private schools. The police are insular....Ross Meurant

    Marshal shows he is simply a product of police culture

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  2. Marshall has ostensibly been put there to 'clean up' the culture: his history in Auckland providing the credentials to do that. In reality, that means clean up the public perception of the current culture. Unfortunately, the belief seems to be that the public are stupid, with short memories, and can be fooled by PR and rhetoric. To really clean up the culture means pulling out the dirty history, examining it, learning from it and putting things in place to ensure it is not perpetuated. Santayana said that those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it. If there is rottenness in the past - and we know there is - then that needs to be acknowledged and labelled before we - the public - will be able to have confidence that such things are not being perpetuated.

    The current moves over covert surveillance is an illustration of this. The Police had evidence thrown out because it was obtained illegally (as they did in the Bain retrial, too). What a 'clean' culture would do is say "OK, we will ensure we act legally in future". Instead, Cabinet and Key are saying that the ends justify the means, and the answer is not to make the Police behave according to the existing law, but change the law urgently - in effect, re-define 'legal'. This endorses the illegal behaviour: the belief that the Police are above the law and that when in breach, it is the law, not the police, that are wrong. Checks and balances on 'the culture' are being eroded, not strengthened! This is the equivalent of painting over a damp stain on the ceiling where the roof is leaking - it will look all bright and clean for a while... but the stain will gradually show again because the underlying problem has not been fixed.

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  3. Commissioner Marshall seems to be repeating the mistaken belief that rhetoric is more than important than substance. There seems to be a prevailing pressure of conformity to police culture, avoiding rocking the boat and so on - however that conformity has a unfortunate history. I agree with you, pull out the dirty history examine it and move on. Give today's force the chance to be seperated from what still seeps from the past. The pity is that the antics of some of the detectives involved in the Crewe case still flavour opinion today because it was never properly dealt with.

    Additionally, we have cases 'on the books' today that show urgent attention is required because more not less mojs continue to happen.

    Any retrospective legislation of this type proposed to 'amend' a law infringes against the NZ Bill of Rights. Already there is an effort to pretend to show how important that the illegal activity of police should be made legal in order to catch a range of villians. This is when tough love is needed, if the evidence was illegally gathered chuck it out as the Court has done, the police and all society need to know the law is being obeyed. Changes can be made in the future but no retrospectively in this fashion. Somebody got it completely wrong in the police and the Courts determined that, so be it.

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