"Independent" Police Conduct Authority a joke - killer cop exonerated

NZ Police, the way their Porirua sausage factory of an academy works, is designed to churn out munters. They are cowards and bullies - fundamentally - it is their M.O. Those are the types who aspire to be police, who are selected, who make it through and who are promoted. They are pack beasts, they are chosen for their adherence to pack mentality, for their arrogance (a policeman is always right, no matter what or who he's raping or killing at the time) and their mediocre intelligence. This is probably true of most police forces. But unlike other police this country has only one police force - directly accountable to the minister rather than a board - a direct tool of the Crown since its formation from the Pakeha death squads terrorising Maori in order to suppress them and effect the forced seizure of their land armed constabulary keeping peace on the frontier. It's best to acknowledge these facts up front when we look at the latest outrage that further dents the pretense of professionalism and credibility so often lauded by themselves in attempting to defend themselves from the indefensible. In this case a murder killing.

The latest whitewash of a police killing has all the usual sickening characters celebrating the status of the NZ Police as being above the law and able to kill - pretty much - at will. The Police Association cheerleader was defending this killer even before he knew any facts, within hours of the shooting, just as the large numbers of naively pro-police robot-humans in talkbackland reflexively did as they fell in line with the Police Association's ridiculous spin that the shooting was not only somehow justified, but that it was necessary and inevitable. An outrageous green light for open season shooting by the cops. It took the intervention of the Chief Justice herself to actually bring Constable Keith Abbott - the killer - to stand trial in a private prosecution. Private because the conservative forces of the Crown were determined to see him walk free. And the redneck jury let the shooter go. Right back on the job.

It has taken nine years to get this IPCA report (The PDF doesn't have readable text either so I can't view it to comment on it at this time) - a fact in itself that warrants skepticism of the conclusion; reached as it has been by a notoriously and chronically compromised organisation dependent on the very people they are supposedly investigating. Hopelessly conflicted, under-resourced and obviously stymied, Justice Goddard's finding's as the IPCA are beyond disappointing.

Yesterday's headlines were just a pathetic airbrushing of the whitewash:It's the bit where Abbott shot him four times that matters here, not a minor - almost sarcastic - afterthought that perhaps the police should treat someone they intended to kill and had pumped several rounds into with dignity. What a horrifying and ugly joke.

The police deserve firstly scrutiny, but not automatic condemnation - when they shoot and kill in the course of apprehending or containing a dangerous offender. The police officer who confronted and then shot and killed a man who threatened him with a replica Glock pistol after a scuffle and then a car chase off the end of Auckland's North-Western motorway in 2000, for example, quite rightly should bare no stigma and answer no charges for his actions. He could not be sure it wasn't the real thing, he sensed mortal danger and so he fired, hitting and fatally wounding the offender. That case seems clear and the resulting exoneration was fair enough because of the circumstances.

But the circumstances in the Wallace killing are quite different. Two policemen made a decision - after Wallace had shown them his aggression and the disrespect of attacking the police car's windows - to drive to the station and arm themselves with guns. At that point they had already made their mind up to use deadly force on Wallace. The Police Association cheerleader would probably go along with that assertion. It certainly looks like a murderous intention was forming at that point. After locating him in the main street in the midst of his rampage one of them, Abbott, goes ahead and approaches Wallace. At some point he puts down his baseball bat and comes at Abbott with a golf club (presumably he had held one instrument in each hand up to this point) and then... bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Dead.

Now what the other gutless cretin of a cop, Dombroski was doing was cowering by the car instead of assisting Abbott. Two male cops on one man with a golf club is certainly not going to be life threatening to the policemen. For Wallace, Abbott's cowardly mistake was fatal. He set out to kill him, and he killed him. The plan was for him to be shot and killed - the actions of the two policeman amply prove that. No attempt at containment seems attempted and nor was the use of anything else or other tactic employed, the shooting was a was foregone conclusion - the last resort was the first - and that was a terrible mistake. A mistake made from fear rather than just the routine stupidity of two men not having the brains to figure out another solution.

The real issue in this case (after Wallace's death itself) is that a precedent has been set that if a cop drops their balls, is panicky, scared and dumb and incapable of making even a simple plan of action with their colleagues (who are standing around next to them), they are - according to the deceptively re-named "Independent" Police Conduct Authority - entitled to just open fire on people if they feel like they might be threatened. The circumstances would indicate that the threat of death in this case was negligible to infinitesimal. It is impossible to credibly assert that two male police officers together would really fear death from one man wielding a 4 iron (or whatever it was). So the threshold is set lower than a reasonable fear of imminent death, down to a bar of one person being possibly injured (had both men decided to take him on with non-lethal weapons, or indeed by hand if they had to).

In other words if one hundred cops confronted one man with a golf club - under the various decisions by Crown authorities topped off yesterday by the credulous IPCA report) - any one of them could shoot to kill him and be justified because the threat of just one of those cops being potentially injured is reason enough. That bar for a police officer to take someone's life is now set so low that the public - at least the segment with their brains not permanently set to knee-jerk - cannot have confidence in the police or its apologist Conduct Authority.