crime

Categories under crime

They’re trying to build a prison/for you & me to live in

Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, September 21st, 2012 - 16 comments

National is celebrating the creation of 1300 jobs (only 300 permanent) with a prison. How many more prisons would they have to build to reverse the increase in unemployment under their watch and create 65,000 permanent jobs? Only 217. It’s ironic that the only job creation the free-market loving Nats can trumpet is a government-paid for prison.

Banks must now submit correct return

Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, September 14th, 2012 - 53 comments

John Key is wrong, John Banks has broken the law. He just did not get prosecuted. The return of donations he signed and submitted in 2010 is false, as the Police have stated. He should now correct it, or he is still in breach of the law.

NZ vs Ecuador

Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, August 19th, 2012 - 183 comments

Ecuador is giving us lessons in sovereign independence.

NRT: An admission

Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, August 14th, 2012 - 3 comments

Idiot/Savant at NRT on the need to reform the Terrorism Suppression Act.

The donkey and the ass

Written By: - Date published: 6:59 am, August 1st, 2012 - 45 comments

Key says the local elections law is an ass. Presumably, he knows what that phrase means: it delivers unjust results. Key thinks its unjust that Banks has escaped justice for his anonymous donation rort. Well, John you’re not helpless. Banks lied to media. He lied to you. He said he hadn’t solicited the donations. Didn’t know about them. He did. He lied to you and New Zealand. Sack him.

Arming the police

Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, July 27th, 2012 - 49 comments

Regular as clockwork the suggestion that police should be armed keeps coming back.

Equal before the law?

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 pm, July 26th, 2012 - 53 comments

Police will not lay charges over the so-called banks.com saga. Assistant Police Commissioner Malcolm Burgess held a press conference this afternoon at Police National Headquarters in Wellington. Minister John Banks would be issued with a warning over the matter, Burgess said. While he only received a warning, Banks’ actions were illegal and future occurrences were likely to be prosecuted.

Just a domestic?

Written By: - Date published: 12:20 pm, July 25th, 2012 - 11 comments

It’s been 16 years since Susan Snively’s ground-breaking report  on the economic cost of domestic violence in New Zealand. In 1996 the prevalence rate of domestic violence was estimated at 1 in 7 people – 301,691, including 129,556 children – with an economic cost of $1.2 billion annually. In addition 40% of all homicides were the result of domestic disputes.

Nat conference protests

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, July 21st, 2012 - 58 comments

This weekend the National Party is holding its annual conference at SkyCity (how appropriate) in Auckland. Protests are planned.  Be careful, keep it peaceful.

Alcohol to be banned

Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, July 15th, 2012 - 15 comments

The Government announced that it was withdrawing its Alcohol Reform Bill today and introducing prohibition after it realised that alcohol was used by the ‘Beast of Blenheim’ to stupefy young girls. “It’s what we’d do if it was any other drug, particularly as it’s associated with the ‘Beast of Blenheim’,” said Justice Minister Judith Collins.

Police cuts

Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, July 14th, 2012 - 41 comments

So the plan to screw down police wages isn’t working, and National are having to keep going with their other approach.  But not everyone is taking death by 1000 cuts lying down.

Justice denied for Dotcom

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, July 11th, 2012 - 10 comments

Shades of the Urewera shambles as Dotcom’s extradition drags out. It’ll be a year between the raid and his day in court. Meanwhile, they’re using extra-judicial punishment: bankrupting him by freezing his assets while his legal bills stack up. Going to end in Dotcom not being extradited because the evidence against him was gathered illegally. Then, he’s going to sue the Crown for millions.

Light-fingered regulation

Written By: - Date published: 3:23 pm, July 10th, 2012 - 16 comments

New Zealand-registered shell companies are being used for big-numbers money laundering. The government has repeatedly said it will tighten company registration to prevent this, but the bill languishes down the order list. National’s big on regulating the behaviour of beneficiaries, but slack when it comes to money-launderers.

NoRightTurn: Private prisons still failing

Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, July 6th, 2012 - 23 comments

NRT reports: When the government introduced private prisons, they promised us that it would lead to better performance. But six months on, Serco’s Mt Eden Corrections Facility is still failing to meet basic performance targets. And remember, these are intentionally soft targets, set below Corrections’ performance so National could declare privatisation a success.

Reasonable doubt

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 pm, July 3rd, 2012 - 52 comments

There’s some very wrong with the Police. A second murder trial in a month ending in acquittal (the Qwaze case wasn’t even a homicide). A case based on evidence that was never going to make it past reasonable doubt. This comes on top of the increased politicisation of the police and the grounds for two over-the-top armed raids being destroyed in court.

Minimum pricing

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, July 3rd, 2012 - 136 comments

All the evidence (eg) shows that increasing the price of harmful substances is the best way to decrease their use and, particularly, their abuse. Minimum pricing is one effective measure to do that for alcohol. But John Key disagrees. Based on … nothing. He hasn’t even taken the time to understand what minimum pricing is.

What did Key really know about Dotcom?

Written By: - Date published: 7:48 am, July 2nd, 2012 - 57 comments

We know that the Police overstepped their authority following their Hollywood wannabe raid on Dotcom’s home. They used invalid warrants to take property of Dotcom’s that they weren’t entitled to, and gave that data to the FBI. Now, we learn that Key’s office was involved in advising the Department of Labour on shutting down a leaked email.

Heroes of capitalism

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, June 30th, 2012 - 24 comments

Banks engaged in market fixing. What a surprise. No doubt someone will be held to account…

Time for Govt to bring the cops to heel

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, June 29th, 2012 - 53 comments

Looks like the Police have cost us a fortune in an inevitable lawsuit from Kim Dotcom. Not only were the warrants they used to raid his house illegal, they took things they weren’t entitled to even under those illegal warrants. They aggravated this by playing FBI wannabes, causing distress and public humiliation. Then they gave their illegally obtained information to the Yanks.

Pike Road?

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 pm, June 21st, 2012 - 10 comments

A strong safety warning today about sheeptruck disaster met Ministerial indifference from Associate Transport Minister Simon Bridges. He said Australian legislation to promote safety and fairness in the road transport industry was not needed here because “New Zealand already has a system of work time requirements to help manage the risk of fatigue”. More infamous last words from a National politician – but the police are really worried.

Trash talk

Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, June 21st, 2012 - 34 comments

So the first car has been crushed. While ministerial grandstanding abounds, a criminologist describes it as “vindictive, malicious, petty and an undignified way of dealing with the problem”.

Police to march?

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, June 21st, 2012 - 34 comments

Who guards the guardians if the police march on Parliament?

Police Liaison = Police Trap

Written By: - Date published: 3:16 pm, June 8th, 2012 - 45 comments

Last week I wrote about how the mass arrest of protesters last week was planned by police from the beginning. A couple of days later I was told that 10 minutes before the march a Police Liaison Officer spoke to protest organisers and stated that police were only there to facilitate the march. I have now managed to track down the video of this conversation.

Serco incompetence should put a halt to Wiri

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, June 7th, 2012 - 10 comments

A year in to its 10-year, $300 million contract, and Serco is making a real hash of running Mt Eden Prison. A second escape this week, along with two late releases, failure to meet drug testing targets and failure to report as agreed. And this is dealing with mostly only remand prisoners. Why are we spending $900m on an unneeded prison at Wiri for these clowns to run?

Police fail to incite riot

Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, June 2nd, 2012 - 142 comments

The police have a number of different strategies for dealing with protest marches. Each has its own known likely result and the police choose their strategy depending on the desired outcome. Yesterday’s mass arrests were not the police responding to something they did not expect to happen. They went into it with a plan to […]

Lessons from Greece

Written By: - Date published: 4:21 pm, June 1st, 2012 - 229 comments

Update 6.45pm: One of lawyers acting for those arrested has just been told by police that everyone arrested will be released without charge in the next couple of hours. That excludes 4 people who have refused to cooperate, presumably by refusing to give their details to police.

Update 9:09pm: John Darroch’s photos from today.

Falling prison numbers

Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 13 comments

It’s an interesting fact that the one area in which National is going against its traditional approach and moving towards what the experts advocate is prisons. And I think I know why. In education, health, welfare etc National’s ideological positions correspond with cutting spending. But ‘lock em up and throw away the key’ costs. When Bill English called prisons a “moral and fiscal failure” his emphasis was on “fiscal”.

The thinner blue line

Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, May 21st, 2012 - 19 comments

National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.

Sinking homicide rate justifies murder spree – PM

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, May 9th, 2012 - 15 comments

The Government’s ‘sinking lid’ on homicides means that John Key can personally garotte 3-5 enemies and the overall number of killings will still decrease, a smiling Prime Minister told journalists today. “On current trends, the number of murders is dropping by half a dozen a year. Which means no-one should mind if I bump off a few annoying arseholes” said Mr Key

NRT: Strapping the chicken on prison privatisation

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, May 8th, 2012 - 5 comments

Despite keeping prisoners in prison too long and an escape, Serco’s private management of Auckland Remand has been judged a success by the Government because it has met all the standards set for it. Sounds reasonable. Until you look a layer deeper and discover that the standards Serco has to meet are much worse than what Corrections already achieves.

Decriminalising pot?

Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, April 30th, 2012 - 96 comments

With pot related arrests down by half over the last eighteen years, the police have been accused of “decriminalisation by stealth”. It’s probably time to have the debate properly.

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