Another day, another case of the "impartial" police refusing to prosecute the rich and powerful for their crimes. This time, its investing in cluster bombs:
KiwiSaver providers will not face a criminal investigation after the Police and Financial Markets Authority decided not to progress a complaint about investments in banned weapons.
[...]
In a statement today Police said a review by themselves and the FMA of the Cluster Munitions Act had revealed "significant threshold issues" and an investigation would not be progressed.
"At this stage there is no evidence to indicate offending. Should there be any new evidence that comes to light this will be assessed and acted on as required."
Compare this with the zealousness with which they prosecute minor drug offences, and its clear that the police think there's one law for the rich and another for the poor. And with the rich, its all just too much work... apparently despite the law saying it is an offence to knowingly invest in forms which make cluster bombs, that's "unclear". Which means not only that these scum walk free, but that they'll keep on making such investments.
The natural response is to call for Parliament to clarify and strengthen the law, as Rob Stock does. But I suspect the problem goes deeper than that. The police seem to be very good at finding laws to be "unclear" when they want them to be - just look at the lack of prosecutions over criminal GCSB domestic spying, or over electoral overspending. The central problem instead is that the police are reluctant to challenge the rich and powerful and hold them to account. But if that's the case, and the law applies only to the poor and the weak, then we have no moral reason to obey it.
