A collapse in police legitimacy

Last week, the government had a big wank about police raids in Ōpōtiki, crowing about "gangs" and "drugs" and "law and order". Unfortunately the police did exactly the same shit they did in the Urewera terror raids 17 years ago, dragging people off in front of their kids and terrorising the community (so much for their "apology"; sincerity requires change, and the police are just incapable of that). And it seems that the local iwi have had enough of that:

Māori community leaders Te Aho and Tame Iti attended a meeting in Ōpōtiki, the Eastern Bay of Plenty town, where locals outlined issues caused by the police raids where mokopuna were forced to watch as whānau were arrested by armed police.

“No more will we tolerate this.”

[...]

“If the NZ Police Head office or any other government agency like Oranga Tamariki think that they can do what they have done again in our district again then they have another thing coming.

“The other thing coming is that we will establish our own intelligence and surveillance of them. When an emergency is triggered we will blockade them at the houses that they raid and not relent until the rights of our people have been validated and our tamariki mokopuna.”

Its hard to see this as anything other than a collapse in police legitimacy. Police need the support of the community to do their jobs effectively, but in Ōpōtiki, the community is saying "nope". National likes to complain about "Labour's" policy of policing by consent (you know, the foundation of our entire model of policing); the above is a glimpse of what policing without consent looks like. While the police can (maybe) use force to carry out their raids and arrests, the cost of that is to further alienate the community they are ostensibly there to protect - which means a further reduction in cooperation, and possibly even more active opposition. And the police simply cannot function as police in the face of that. At least not in any way that we would recognise or accept.