Because of incidents like this. Complain about a police assault, get your friend charged as leverage and to undermine the credibility of the complaint. It's another reminder of how power corrupts, and of the need for an pro-active, independent body to investigate complaints and keep the police in line, rather than the underfunded, institutionally compromised one we have at present. But the most disturbing bit is this:
As it turned out, our friend was more than willing to comply with the “usual processing”, such as formal mugshots and fingerprinting, but had refused to dress up and stand particular ways for photographs in her cell, that had been requested by in her words “3 big men threatening me”. She was told she wouldn’t be released from custody unless she complied with the unreasonable requests. When she asked what law they were supposedly doing all this under, one supposedly said “under section… I’ll have to go find out”.Clearly the spirit of Clint Rickards is alive and well in the Auckland police. And with one of their own now in charge of monitoring them, there is little chance of it being exorcised.
