From the Herald: Hikoi marches on police commissioner:
Protesters from the Tuhoe Hikoi have marched up Molesworth St to Police Commissioner Howard Broad's office.Because that's really the way to respond to public protest: an overwhelming show of force with an explicit threat of violence. Would they have done the same if the protestors were pakeha? And how many actual criminals would those police have been caching if they weren't acting as a personal bodyguard to the police commissioner?They were met by a four-deep police cordon armed with batons.
It's also worth noting that while the police thought the protestors justified this response when outside their boss's office, they didn't think it justified such a response when it was at Parliament (which represents the people they actually work for). But I guess its just another example of the police putting a high value on "protecting their own", and a much lower value on their actual job of protecting the public.
