Ross Meurant: Time For Police Re Calibration

Problem with gangs these days – is quite different to Red Squad days.

Red Squad was not a weapon only for use against the 81 Protest movement.  It was a weapon, in the words of former Auckland police assistant commissioner Graham Perry, to:

“Make Auckland safe enough for my mother to walk down Queen Street at mid-night.”

This was the Graham Perry who was my commanding officer when I was a detective on Regional Crime Squad – which operated to a similar code.

Kevin Boyle: The Auckland Terrorist Attack – A Seminal Case Study and Blueprint for Change?

The Auckland terror attack on 3 Sept 2021 that resulted in the death of the terrorist Ahamed Samsudeen and seriously injured seven innocent people, could have been prevented. The event presents as a seminal case study into how society attempts but fails to prevent crime using policing, and evidence of the failure here can help define a blueprint for change.

Policing is responsible for crime prevention alongside its core law enforcement role, but it does not and cannot prevent crime. Unaware of this fault, it continues to covet the role by defending its failures and influencing law changes that do not enhance its prevention value. The most vexing consequence is policing’s ability to control the message that allows it to obstruct the fault from lawmakers who are then unable to expose and remedy it.

But policing demonstrated the critical disconnect between its dual roles when it ignored an academic-led intervention solution that could have prevented Samsudeen carrying out his attack in favor of its own ill-fated law enforcement 24/7 surveillance method that failed.