A guest post on Kiwiblog by Lucy Rogers:
It was with slight reservations that in November 2023 I laid a complaint to the Independent Police Conduct Authority about the police wrongfully arresting me. Literally everyone seemed to distrust the IPCA. At first I was cautious but kept an open mind. A few months later this progressed to extreme stress when someone purporting to have firsthand knowledge of the IPCA’s practices told me things about the IPCA that I later discovered to be factually untrue.
Why am I speaking up?
I don’t think anyone should have to go through the kind of stress I faced a few months into an investigation re: a life-defining event that threw me into the public sphere. I also do not believe that the IPCA deserves the distrust and hostility it seems to face from a significant proportion of the public. It is for these reasons that I want to do my bit to set the record straight here.
The IPCA are awesome
The staff members I was dealing with at the IPCA were exemplary people. On the one hand, Sarah Bullen and Warren Young (from whom I sought permission to name) did not approach my case with an ideological assumption that all police are certain to be evil and dishonest people. Having such people in a position to review police conduct would be a disaster for this country. On the other hand, neither of them were police cronies.
Here is an example of the IPCA’ s commitment to truth
Sarah was professional, intelligent and at times kind. I would like to provide one example of her integrity. One of the police officers who arrested me was foolish enough to provide the IPCA with photos of my arrest taken by a member of the public which she had found on social media. She did not know that he also had footage of the incident. Sarah, however, contacted him independently and had the insight to ask if he might have footage, which miraculously he did.
The video was critical
Uncovering that piece of evidence has significantly impacted my life, because the police alleged that I was screaming at people in a state of “excited delirium” and that they thought I was a mental health patient. If I had not been able to prove that the police were lying, this would have destroyed my professional reputation and seriously impacted my career. I only had footage of the second half of the incident and the police knew that and exploited the fact. The truth is that I was silent and motionless: I did not say a single word to the protesters, let alone yell or act hysterically.
Further examples of ICPA professionalism
Sarah and Warren always took my calls, or if they couldn’t, they called me back promptly. They did not stonewall me. In fact, I called Warren once when he was on a ski field with his grandchildren on holiday. Despite not being at work, he was kind enough to take my call. (I hasten to add that I quickly assured him that it wasn’t urgent and he could call me back later.) When Sarah was interviewing me, I remember making an off-handed comment about an aspect of the evidence without intending to expand on it. Sarah prompted me for further information, which flagged to me that she was sincerely interested in the truth and the facts.
The causes of public distrust of the IPCA
There are lots of reasons for the IPCA’s reputation, but I think one of the problems it faces is illustrated by today’s events: in the face of the IPCA’s finding that the police arrested me and lied about me to justify it, the police nevertheless put out a press release maintaining that my arrest was justified. They reiterated alleged facts about my arrest which were in fact debunked in the IPCA report, without providing any reason for questioning the IPCA’s findings.
The IPCA unfairly takes blame for things
In other words, the police (I suspect) have a habit of getting away with it because the IPCA does not have the discretion to prosecute and that power ultimately lies with the police themselves. The IPCA then takes the blame for this. That’s not fair.
More thoughts on various matters including the IPCA report itself will probably follow in due course in a separate blog post. For now, I need a good book and a glass of wine. It has been a hectic day.
I don’t think anyone should have to go through the kind of stress I faced a few months into an investigation re: a life-defining event that threw me into the public sphere. I also do not believe that the IPCA deserves the distrust and hostility it seems to face from a significant proportion of the public. It is for these reasons that I want to do my bit to set the record straight here.
The IPCA are awesome
The staff members I was dealing with at the IPCA were exemplary people. On the one hand, Sarah Bullen and Warren Young (from whom I sought permission to name) did not approach my case with an ideological assumption that all police are certain to be evil and dishonest people. Having such people in a position to review police conduct would be a disaster for this country. On the other hand, neither of them were police cronies.
Here is an example of the IPCA’ s commitment to truth
Sarah was professional, intelligent and at times kind. I would like to provide one example of her integrity. One of the police officers who arrested me was foolish enough to provide the IPCA with photos of my arrest taken by a member of the public which she had found on social media. She did not know that he also had footage of the incident. Sarah, however, contacted him independently and had the insight to ask if he might have footage, which miraculously he did.
The video was critical
Uncovering that piece of evidence has significantly impacted my life, because the police alleged that I was screaming at people in a state of “excited delirium” and that they thought I was a mental health patient. If I had not been able to prove that the police were lying, this would have destroyed my professional reputation and seriously impacted my career. I only had footage of the second half of the incident and the police knew that and exploited the fact. The truth is that I was silent and motionless: I did not say a single word to the protesters, let alone yell or act hysterically.
Further examples of ICPA professionalism
Sarah and Warren always took my calls, or if they couldn’t, they called me back promptly. They did not stonewall me. In fact, I called Warren once when he was on a ski field with his grandchildren on holiday. Despite not being at work, he was kind enough to take my call. (I hasten to add that I quickly assured him that it wasn’t urgent and he could call me back later.) When Sarah was interviewing me, I remember making an off-handed comment about an aspect of the evidence without intending to expand on it. Sarah prompted me for further information, which flagged to me that she was sincerely interested in the truth and the facts.
The causes of public distrust of the IPCA
There are lots of reasons for the IPCA’s reputation, but I think one of the problems it faces is illustrated by today’s events: in the face of the IPCA’s finding that the police arrested me and lied about me to justify it, the police nevertheless put out a press release maintaining that my arrest was justified. They reiterated alleged facts about my arrest which were in fact debunked in the IPCA report, without providing any reason for questioning the IPCA’s findings.
The IPCA unfairly takes blame for things
In other words, the police (I suspect) have a habit of getting away with it because the IPCA does not have the discretion to prosecute and that power ultimately lies with the police themselves. The IPCA then takes the blame for this. That’s not fair.
More thoughts on various matters including the IPCA report itself will probably follow in due course in a separate blog post. For now, I need a good book and a glass of wine. It has been a hectic day.
3 comments:
May be the case for relatively serious situations. But not my experience. Police non action for attempted assault with a very serious weapon, refusal to pursue a witnessed assault with significant property damage, hundreds of dollars of witnessed theft, and their advice to the malcontent perpetrator to lay a complaint against me despite obvious to anyone with any legal knowledge that no case, caused me, with no prior legal knowledge, to spend over 100 hours mugging up on law, court procedure, preparing defence. All for the baseless case to be withdrawn days before Court appearance. The IPCA did not accept that Police inaction/action in any way deficient or inappropriate.
The IPCA treated my complaint atrociously. It was comprehensive and well supported by evidence.
But it asked them to expose the serious wrongs and illegality at the heart of the Crimestoppers Hotline rort, which my case exposed.
I got not one iota of acknowledgement that they are using a dangerously flawed and illegal surveillance system which is to their immense benefit but which is to the detriment of all New Zealanders who are not part of the deep state totalitarian system being systematically constructed around us.
We ‘accept’ a permanent stasi hotline in our society because the true damage such a line does is never revealed and the supposed benefits are presented (if at all) with dirty and deceptive stats.
One must NEVER question our rulers’ ‘safe and effective’ invocations for our ‘good’.
Many is the brutal sociopath who has deceived vulnerable others with the occasional display of warmth, goodness and compassion.
Be under no illusion, their MO is deception.
In the big scheme of things, they are not there for the little people.
THE IPCA was never intended to be a Court.
It is an body set up to ensure all matters are properly investigated AND that all matter - good and bad - are presented to the courts i.e. fairness is justice not troves of data hidden by he police - from Hutton to the Hall case and more.
Courts were all witnesses are cross examined and open to public scrutiny is where Justice should be Served - not in kangaroo courts which have and are usurping the role of true justice.
Ill do a blog on IPCA -
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