In 2005, Senior Sergeant Dave Archibald was given a formal reprimand for accessing police files on the victim of police pack rapists Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum to pass to their defence team. So naturally, the police have promoted him and set him to impart his values to new officers at the Police College in Porirua.
To call this a mistake is an understatement. This is a man who has betrayed the trust the New Zealand public places in the police, who abused police resources to help criminals, who put his mates before the law. Such a man should not be being promoted; he should instead have been told that there is no future for him and men like him in the police.
Meanwhile, the message from this is loud and clear: despite all their assurance, the police have not changed. And they wonder why people don't respect them? They have no-one to blame but themselves.
