Last week it was cops in Timaru who unjustifiably tasered a man and perjured themselves; this week its like something out of The Shield: covering up for cops who stole drugs from evidence:
Waikato police covered up the existence of a corrupt cop who stole drugs from a police station evidence safe.
The theft is believed to be the reason a Black Power gang member changed his guilty plea in a drugs case in 2011.
But it was only after the Waikato Times approached police following a three-month investigation that Waikato police district commander superintendent Bruce Bird last week admitted the incident occurred.
[...]
More than 70 officers - past and present - were interviewed from Huntly and Ngaruawahia police stations in the Waikato incident. No one was charged, the case remains unsolved and the police officer involved may well be still serving on the force.
The failure of police authorities to be open about what occurred at the time angered a police source who said it was hushed up to protect the police's reputation.
Because that strategy worked so well for the Catholic church, didn't it?
This is a case of outright corruption: a cop stole these drugs either to feed their habit, for money, or specifically to sabotage the case against a gang-member. Either is deeply concerning. But if that's going on in our police force, we need to know, so we can do something about it. Keeping it secret stops us from doing that, and potentially allows corruption to spread. But it protects police management from accountability for their failure, which is all that seems to matter to them.
