by Phil Beuning
Standing former police commissioner Andrew Coster and his cronies down from their jobs is insufficient in my opinion.
Governments repeatedly ask the public to accept that anything the public service manages to ‘foxtrot unicorn’ is purely a manifestation of accidentally coincidental incompetence, but I fear the country is growing weary of what they regard as mushroom fertiliser.
This is not a bureaucratic error by a council clerk. This is the non-military wing of Crown enforcement. These people have incredible powers.
Nothing short of a full independent criminal investigation under the Crimes Act 1961 will clear this up, I believe.
Possible crimes include:
s115
115 Conspiring to bring false accusation
Every one who conspires to prosecute any person for any alleged offence, knowing that person to be innocent thereof, is liable—
(a)
to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years if that person might, on conviction of the alleged offence, be sentenced to preventive detention, or to imprisonment for a term of 3 years or more:
(b)
to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years if that person might, on conviction of the alleged offence, be sentenced to imprisonment for a term less than 3 years.
s116
116 Conspiring to defeat justice
Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who conspires to obstruct, prevent, pervert, or defeat the course of justice in New Zealand or the course of justice in an overseas jurisdiction.
117 Corrupting juries and witnesses
Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who—
(a)
dissuades or attempts to dissuade a person, by threats, bribes, or other corrupt means, from giving evidence in any cause or matter (whether civil or criminal, and whether tried or to be tried in New Zealand or in an overseas jurisdiction); or
(e) wilfully attempts in any other way to obstruct, prevent, pervert, or defeat the course of justice in New Zealand or the course of justice in an overseas jurisdiction.
Are Coster and others guilty of crimes? I don’t know. But I do know the IPCA has whitewashed police corruption before and I have no faith in it.
The idea that police top brass could corrupt the investigative process so as to crush a woman complaining of sexual misconduct by one of their own, is abhorrent in my view.
Minister Mark Mitchell needs to understand that the time to fully investigate police corruption is here, and now. The public want answers.
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