The Daily Blog has another appalling story of police brutality. In the process there's this disturbing description of the police's behaviour:
[The police officer] then begun to shove, push me across the street on the pedestrian crossing holding my arms up behind my back, above my head so that it made me bend over forward. I got to the other side of the pedestrian crossing, the pain became too much.
This treatment continued for a prolonged period of time.
There is a name for this tactic: it's called strappado, and it is a well-known torture technique used by (among others) the Spanish Inquisition, the Israelis, and of course the Americans. And now its being used by NZ police during arrests to deliberately inflict pain on criminal suspects. This is not a "reasonable use of force" consequent to arrest; it is torture, and it is absolutely unacceptable. Those who use it need to be prosecuted.
