Howard Broad: Incompetent, dishonest or about to fire some people?

Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, December 20th, 2008 - 48 comments
Categories: activism, police - Tags: , , , ,

Let us assume, for a while, that Broad didn’t know the detail of SIG’s activities with Gilchrist

If his staff were doing their job he knew about the story before Saturday, but let’s pretend they didn’t and the Police weren’t asked for comment until um… midday Saturday. Unlikely I know, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt…

He got rung at about 12:30pm Saturday and told what DS van der Velde was asked. There will have been a meeting at Police HQ that afternoon with Comms, and senior staff from the related business unit(s), some by phone conference. By then someone will have rounded up Gilchrist’s key handlers and someone will have tried to contact Gilchrist (by phone and visiting his home if that didn’t work).

So at this briefing he will have asked for a summary of everything they know about Gilchrist’s activities, and a risk assessment of what the media might have, as well as what’s the worst they might have. He will also have made sure that existing summaries of SIG, SIU and TAU were up-to-date and that summaries of current and recent work were drawn up the Minister will want them. He will at least warn the Minister on Saturday.

Sunday morning, a first edition of the SST will be delivered by Police staff, depending on his management patterns either to his home or to him at the office.

Sunday morning will have had an early meeting at Police HQ. Discuss the story with Comms, get the response nailed. Check the briefing he’s received, ask for more detail (all targets, any other SIG ops which might be problematic, any outstanding complaints, disciplinary cases or court cases). If they didn’t do it on Saturday they’ll start working out who knows what and who they’re going to tell. They know about Rees, Hager and Hubbard what do they have? who do they know? who will they tell? what’s next? They’ll also check their own defensive options: how much dirt do they have on Gilchrist? Rees? Again a big part of the focus is risk what’s the worst that might be out there? Someone from Comms with a good head for political and reputational risk will be on that. Another phone call to the Minister, probably followed up with paper background.

By Sunday afternoon every Police officer who’s spoken to Gilchrist will have been contacted and asked to check their notes were up to date, and for any other information they can provide and someone will have gone through every email, conversation and file note containing information provided by Gilchrist looking for potential fish hooks.

When Broad briefed Collins on Monday he knew about the unions, he knew about the Greens. He knew that Gilchrist had been asked for information on groups. He also knew there was a very good chance that everyone would know that very soon.

If he is competent, and his staff behaved professionally and competently that is.

So, we have three options:

1) Broad is an incompetent Police Commissioner.

2) Broad was dishonest to the media (and possibly his Minister).

3) Broad has unprofessional and incompetent staff working for him.

Pick one (or a couple), and explain why we don’t need an inquiry.

Anita

48 comments on “Howard Broad: Incompetent, dishonest or about to fire some people? ”

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  1. Johnty Rhodes 1
    20 December 2008 at 3:16 pm

    Option 4: Broad was under undue political interference that affected his & the polices performance.

    Being Helen Clarks bitch in the police force I think there needs to be a further inquiry into how much the past administration influenced decision making, after all, there were a lot of prima facie cases that did not reach the arresting stage.

  2. RedLogix 2
    20 December 2008 at 3:44 pm

    An acquaintance of mine is a 20 yr plus serving Police Officer. Her opinion is that the most senior layers of Police managment have become very isolated from the rest of society and are making decisions based on a narrow warped world view derived from a life wholly immersed in dealing with sad, stupid people committing vile, tragic criminal acts. By the time you’ve got anywhere near Deputy Commissioner level you’ve been stuck in this unpleasant world all your adult life. This means that our most senior Police people, while they may be very competent at dealing with crime, are often out of step when dealing with the expectations of the wider, non-criminal community.

    I don’t think this is a question of incompetence, corruption or inappropriate political interference…. rather it is a lack of appropriate oversight that has led to this. Some form of independent, non-Police civilian engagement at the most senior National and District levels would be an interesting response to this clearly wrong decisions that are being made at present.

  3. Inventory2 3
    20 December 2008 at 3:44 pm

    Interesting questions Anita, which will inevitably open themselves to the kind of allegations that Johnty makes above.

    Leaving aside the “Helen Clark’s bitch” bit, I think there some real questions that need to be answered about the NZ Police, from the top down. And on reflection, I do not believe that Howard Broad will be remembered as a particularly competent Police Commissioner.

  4. Anita 4
    20 December 2008 at 3:48 pm

    JohntyRhodes,

    Ok, we could add a

    2a) Broad was dishonest with the media after being instructed to do so by his Minister.

    Why would Collins have instructed him to lie?

  5. Lew 5
    20 December 2008 at 3:51 pm

    JR: Option 4, aka the `I want to believe’ option of a Secret Conspiracy which explains everything and absolves all the people we want absolved and implicates everyone we want implicated.

    Explain to me why Labour would order the police to infiltrate and covertly surveil any of the following groups:

    1. The trade unions who are affiliated with and make up Labour’s support base.

    2. The Green Party, with whom Labour wanted to form a coalition government.

    3. The left-aligned environmental and animal rights which provide a strong base of support for many Green causes.

    Honestly, it’s like the Nats organising to spy on ACT, Federated Farmers, the Employers’ and Manufacturers’ Association and the Business Roundtable. It just defies belief.

    One other thing: You get to paint the Clark government either as incompetent fools or as evil masterminds. THe two are mutually exclusive; you can’t just chop and change between them as it suits you.

    L

    Captcha: `Bugher ing’. Indeed.

  6. Lew 6
    20 December 2008 at 3:57 pm

    JR: Oh, and another thing – for the Police commissioner to accede to direct political interference from the government of the day (whoever it is) on operational matters would clearly constitute incompetence. A commissioner who allowed the police to lose their political independent would certainly qualify under Anita’s 1. above.

    L

  7. barnsleybill 7
    20 December 2008 at 4:18 pm

    Now we know why the police were too busy to charge len richards or any one of a dozen other clear cases of lawbreaking by labour people over the last decade. They were too busy snooping around life’s unfortunate angry twits.
    it will be interesting to see if immunity is still available to labourites over the next few weeks
    Nice to see the calls for an inquiry though, just a shame it has taken the left two years longer than the right to demand this.

  8. John BT 8
    20 December 2008 at 4:19 pm

    Surely the unions will be reconsidering their support for the Labour party following these relevations. Howard really is a joke and would not be there if it wasn’t for Miss Clark. What do you expect when we have a Deputy Commissioner who has not even done her bit walking the streets,so to speak.( Probably a secret agenda. 21 springs to mind.)
    No doubt the Greens will be suitably annoyed also. With a bit of luck they will come up with some good policies compatable with National and in around 3 years time find themselves in government as another support party. That could be a good thing.
    ps. Lew, I would go with the incompetent fools one.

  9. Lew 9
    20 December 2008 at 4:39 pm

    bb: It’s not so much that it’s taken time as that it’s taken evidence.

    L

  10. Anita 10
    20 December 2008 at 5:36 pm

    RedLogix,

    Your explanation is good for why SIG was up to something so profoundly inappropriate.

    It doesn’t, however, explain what Broad said to the media on Monday.

  11. inaane 11
    20 December 2008 at 7:36 pm

    Move along, nothing to see here anymore.

    So the Police spied on some dumb hippies. And the dumb hippies had union links.

    Lets strike, yeah!

  12. Ari 12
    20 December 2008 at 7:53 pm

    Option 4: Broad was under undue political interference that affected his & the polices performance.

    Do you have anything that even objectively suggests this theory? I’m willing to admit it’s possible, but a reason beyond “I didn’t like Labour” would be nice.

    [lprent: Especially since Rob has been doing this from 1999, from the Shipley era, and under multiple police commissioners. ]

  13. barnsleybill 13
    20 December 2008 at 8:02 pm

    Lew, how long has this evidence been available I wonder? A change of government was needed before the players in this sorry saga decided to reveal what they know.
    I have had no confidence whatsoever in the clowns at police hq for nearly two decades, so none of this comes as any surprise to me.
    The only real surprise is the monumental tactical blunder of not waiting until national had been in power for at least six months. At least then they could have attempted to pin it on National. As opposed to it all happening while Helen had Broad on a short leash.

  14. Peter Burns 14
    20 December 2008 at 8:09 pm

    Helen’s police friends have done rather well. Wonder how Sandra is going after her surprise departure to work for a gay US senator? The police are rotten at the top, it’s common knowledge around the legal fraternity. Fair cop blue boys, clean your act up Howard,’cause police integrity is laughably absent in kiwi society. Any sane person would be mental to think bent cops should run the show.

  15. Lew 15
    20 December 2008 at 8:16 pm

    bb: This question has been addressed already, on another thread. Short answer – not long enough; in fact, she would have liked to go public under Labour, because they’d have to do something about it in order to retain cred with the unions and the greens. National need to do neither.

    L

  16. John BT 16
    20 December 2008 at 8:37 pm

    So, we are all agreed on the fact that this a Labour cockup ?

    [lprent: No. This would have happened whatever government was in power. Why don’t you actually read some material on how the police operates. Then you won’t look quite as much like a ignorant drone.
    The only political fallout is likely to be for the government that knew about this, if they fail to do something about it. It is on Nationals watch. It’d be good to see if they have the ability to operate as a government (something that I don’t see at present)]

  17. lprent 17
    20 December 2008 at 8:47 pm

    bb:  Bit over 2 weeks before the election. More important than the election were two factors

    1) Needed to find who in the hell was running Rob. Because it was obvious that without solid proof of who and what, it’d have been rubbished as unsubstantiated.

    2) My parents 50th wedding anniversary  on labour weekend. There was absolutely no way that Rochelle was going to let this disrupt that. Rob was invited, so few in the family were told until later.

    This is the earliest that everything could have been released. There was vast amount of data to look through, a lot of correlation work to locate his handlers, and issues about how and what to present. Just think of the privacy issues on some of the stuff that Rob was sending – eg who was going out with whom.

    I don’t see this as being particularly political except in so far as it raises some pretty serious issues about the way that the police control themselves.

    To be precise I think that your obsession about Helen controlling the police is just a pure fabrication by some of the paranoid right. The police operate largely independently of the political structure at an operational level. But this looks to me to be over-zealous cowboy units taking an excessive approach towards activists and doing it without regard for the consequences for democracy.

    What I’d like to know is how far up the chain of command this nutter police viewpoint extends. It has been evident for a number of years that the police were abusing their powers. I’ve seen activists charged with the most ridiculous offenses. To me it appears that the charges were only for obtaining search warrants, and that is an appalling intrusion into citizens lives.

    I’d point out that there are probably informants in other areas as well. Rob tended to focus on the ‘left/green’. But I’d take a bet that there were others looking at the right.

  18. Peter Burns 18
    20 December 2008 at 9:11 pm

    Many police hours are spent watching the right Iprent. I can testify to the fact.

  19. RedLogix 19
    20 December 2008 at 9:24 pm

    Let’s personalise this for everyone.

    How about, hypothetically, we were to discover that SIG, via say the same Internal Affairs people who monitor for child pornography offences, were also quietly logging the IP addresses and names of everyone who visited The Standard and posted here. (Or any other high profile political site for that matter.)

    And all of these names were being filed as “politically active/opinionated/risky” individuals.

    How would YOU react to discovering this? I know I would feel threatened. Sure it’s an hypothetical scenario, and one that until this affair with Gilchrist surfaced I would have dismissed as implausible.

    Now I’m not so sure.

  20. Rex Widerstrom 20
    20 December 2008 at 9:36 pm

    Excellent analysis Anita. I certainly can’t argue with your conclusions. Meanwhile RedLogix suggests:

    …Police managment have become very isolated from the rest of society and are making decisions based on a narrow warped world view derived from a life wholly immersed in dealing with sad, stupid people committing vile, tragic criminal acts… they may be very competent at dealing with crime, are often out of step when dealing with the expectations of the wider, non-criminal community.

    I think that’s precisely it. There’s also another corollary to that view – and that is that anyone acused of a crime must be guilty. It’s a view that sees their job not merely as dispassionately investigating a situation and sometimes concluding there’s nothing worth pursuing, but one of “observing targets” in order to “assess their threat level”. Nowhere in that scenario is an allowance for the fact that people may be of no threat whatsoever. Even if they don’t do something now, they will in future… so we’ll watch them for a decade until they do.

    Thus relatively junior officers (sergeant and below) are making incorrect decisions to investigate and to prosecute with no oversight (or sometimes tacit approval) from senior ranks. Once a prosecution is lodged it then becomes a matter of the honour of the Force that the accused is found guilty.

    And thus if a court finds otherwise, then the accused wasn’t innocent but “got away with it”. Rather than eliciting any sympathy for the ordeal the wrongfully accused has suffered the mindset instead leads to an attitude that the person has, as one officer termed it to my late busines partner, “got it coming”. And thus the person becomes an even greater target.

    If the officers on the case are misguided but honest, the result is invasion of privacy and harrassment. If they’re bent, it’s planting of evidence and manufacturing of witnesses.

    As Peter Burns says, police integrity is almost entirely absent in NZ – not because of corruption per se but because the police hierarchy hold the view that anyone apprehended by them is automatically either sad and stupid or evil and dangerous, and that their commital of some vile act is proven the moment they’re arrested.

  21. John BT 21
    20 December 2008 at 9:38 pm

    Iprent, I object to being called an ignorent drone. You dumbarse. I was probably getting smacked by cops when you were shitting yellow.
    Labour knew about this ages ago. What did they do about it? If they didn’t initiate it they certainly condoned it. It was in the bloody papers you dick.

    [lprent: Unlikely unless you’re a whole lot older than your comments show, So why don’t you take my advice and have a look at what the barriers between government and police are, because you’re essentially talking crap. You’re assuming that the police talk to the government about what they are doing. They don’t really unless they are asking for money for new or updated programs. There may be some leakage of info, but that is usually just to support the budget requests or if there is a particular issue. There may be other leakages to the political sphere, the same as there are to journo’s, but it isn’t systematic, it is individual.

    The police need to have a close look at why in the hell they have this type of activity going on. If they don’t have the ability to do so and to convince the rather pissed off activists, political parties, and unions – then it is time to get the judicatory involved.]

  22. barnsleybill 22
    20 December 2008 at 10:01 pm

    Lynn, I actually agree with you on this topic. A line has been crossed, but I do not believe that senior members of the labour cabinet are their cling-ons were unaware.
    My issues with the police in this country are wide ranging and began with the peter ellis case, the bain murders and the sounds case. my concerns multiplied when peter doone was railroaded out by Helen Clark who lied to the wellington paper and got away with it. Since then we have seen a significant amount of highly suspect behaviour by leading members of the labour party whitewashed by police hq. I could call it a lot worse than highly suspect behaviour but this is a topic I feel passionately about and do not wish to give you an excuse to delete the comment.
    The ruthless way that Clark dealt with Doone was a lesson to all who have followed him.
    A wide ranging commission of inquiry needs to be established to deal with many issues, ranging from lead detectives having relationships with creche mothers, through to Doone, then to Broad and his inability to press charges EVER against members of the sitting government and finally to these spy vs spy clowns in the ironically named special investigations group.
    Redlogix, personalise away. Every single time you connect to the internet EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DO is logged by many entities. So your suggestions are not hypothetical at all.
    Oh, and Lynn. I am sure it does not bother you either way. But I accept your explanation of the time line and retract the earlier assertion.

  23. Pascal's bookie 23
    20 December 2008 at 11:59 pm

    John, if you object to being called an ignorant drone the solution is to include evidence for your claims in your posts. That would deal with the ignorant part. The drone thing is to do with the fact that your reasoning is ever so similar to what anyone can hear on talkback or by reading Wishart. After a while the conspiracy stuff all starts to sound the same.

    It was in the bloody papers you dick.

    Cite? Something that says that the police were spying on the Green Party, unions and other activists groups for the best part of last decade, using paid informants and taking a dragnet approach to information. That’s what this is about. You claim that the former gov’t knew specifically about these details. Cite? Your paranoia doesn’t count as a reference I’m afraid.

  24. Johnty Rhodes 24
    21 December 2008 at 12:39 am

    PB – this whole post is about theory, hence asking for fact is a mis-leading question.
    At the end of the day, this post is all about assumption, and we know what assumption is:
    MOTHER OF ALL FUCK UPS.
    Why is Collins being dragged into this? Convienent timimg I suggest, gee i hope Broad does not has his wife driving thru a police check point anytime soon. We know what happened to Doone, he was doomed after this scenario took place.

  25. lprent 25
    21 December 2008 at 1:07 am

    JR: Judith Collins is the current minister of police. If you’d read the law governing the police, as minister she is the only person in the political sphere who can ask questions of the police commissioner. She is the access of the public to the operational policy of the police.

    The IPCA can look at the actions of individual police, but not operational policy – so there is no point in using that avenue. All the police have to do is to say that they were following policy. Since we don’t know what the policy of the police is with regard to monitoring of groups, there is no real point in asking the IPCA. That is apart from their year or more long delay. In the end all that they could say as a response is that officers that have been complained out have acted in conformance with police operational policy.

    So Judith Collins is it. She should be doing her job in asking the police what their operational policy is for this type of surveillance. So far it looks to me (and many others) like she is not.

    If Annette King was still in that position, then she’d be on the top right of the post.

  26. lprent 26
    21 December 2008 at 1:19 am

    bb: Helen was annoyed about the waste of police resources with the INCIS project from what I remember. Doone was the main person pushing for that, so that dissatisfaction spilt over to him and his way of thinking about the future directions of the police.

    From what I was hearing about the project from the IT industry, it was not going well mainly because of feature creep.

  27. Anita 27
    21 December 2008 at 7:31 am

    JohntyRhodes,

    At the end of the day, this post is all about assumption

    This post is based on a single assumption (that Broad didn’t know what SIG/Gilchrist were up to until Saturday afternoon). The only other possibility (assuming a very low level of competence in the Police) is that he knew earlier, which looks worse for him.

    Nothing in this post was intended to look at any events before that Saturday or at the actions of SIG. The question I was interested in was why Broad went to the media on Monday and told them palpable falsehoods.

    Sometimes senior public servants mislead the media because of genuine confusion or failure of internal processes (e.g. IRD’s error this year over provisional tax), but this looks like a very different case.

    If Broad’s staff were at least marginally competent and professional Broad would have known about the unions, the Greens and the questions SIG asked about groups when he briefed the Minister and spoke to the media on Monday.

  28. lprent 28
    21 December 2008 at 8:27 am

    Anita: That is my feeling as well. I was absolutely astounded when Broad came out and said that they were only looking at individuals and not groups. Not only was that not what I saw in my brief look through the e-mails, it was also not what I’d seen observing the patterns of the police operating on activist groups. They are targeting and attacking whole groups with surveillance and harassment with the powers to charge.

    If Broad didn’t realize that was the current standing policy of groups like SIG and TAU, then perhaps he needs to dig deeper. What worries me is that he may be aware, agrees with the policy, but does not want that operational policy to be public.

  29. Anita 29
    21 December 2008 at 8:27 am

    Johnty Rhodes,

    Why is Collins being dragged into this?

    Huh? You suggested that Broad misled the media on Monday because he “was under undue political interference”. The only person who could have had that influence on him on Monday (or Sunday) was Collins.

  30. Anita 30
    21 December 2008 at 8:38 am

    lprent,

    To stray off-topic for a moment 🙂

    I reckon Broad knew exactly what kind of monster he’d created with SIG. He may not have been aware of the operational detail (due either to maintaining only a high-level overview, or to wilful blindness), but it’s very hard to believe that he thought that were all very busy investigating individual terrorists (or significant proto-terrorists) and were playing within the public rules.

    There can’t have been a lot of evidence of successful terrorist hunting (even if Broad believed everything he said about the Oct 15 raids), and quite a lot of evidence of dubious behaviour coming back as complaints and lost cases.

  31. higherstandard 31
    21 December 2008 at 8:54 am

    When you have commentators as varied and coming from different political spectrums as those on “the standard”, whaleoil, kiwiblog plus Garth George and the Greens all shouting that something smells and we need an enquiry the obvious conclusion is we need an enquiry.

  32. Peter Burns 32
    21 December 2008 at 9:20 am

    I agree Anita at the end of the day this keystone cop action has cost the country millions without the crown snaring a conviction. Time for a radical rethink to how police operate. One fucking word comes to mind, which is, accountability, not Howard’s way! Police morale and public confidence in the cops are at all time lows, because police management are wasted spaces.

  33. lprent 33
    21 December 2008 at 9:33 am

    Anita: One thing that I’m always puzzled about is this question of lost cases and performance. For that matter, the question of sending out court decisions (especially those on appeal) to the frontline police.

    I doubt that the police do have any performance monitoring on their charges. The reason that I think that is because of some of the really really stupid charges I seen with various activists and the multiple endpoints. It’d be really hard to see what is happening at the frontline from the stats. (What has been even more daft is that some of the district court judges convicting on stupid charges.)

    For instance Rochelle got charged for using a megaphone at a protest. She defended it at district court and lost. Then she appealed to the high court and won. IMO that latter decision is what you’d expect. Otherwise larger protests would rapidly get disorganized without megaphones and far more dangerous to public order and the police.

    Ok, so next time that police officers decided to arrest her for using a megaphone at a protest, she told the officer that they were wrong and why. So they arrested her anyway. Get back to the police station and the senior Sargent was inclined to let her off provided that she promised not to use the megaphone. So in her quiet and polite way she refused, as she’d already won a case based exactly on this point.

    Some discussion goes on in the corner with the arresting officers arguing with the Sargent. Eventual result, they charged her with something else which had about the same probability of sticking as using yogurt as paint in a rainstorm. In this case the case went all to the way to trial many months later, when the police decided not to offer a case. The charges get thrown out.

    My point is that in no modern operation with feedback and performance monitoring should have that kind of decision to arrest and charge her a second time to have happened. It was ineffective and extremely expensive for the zero results. It was only done to salve the egos of a couple of police officers with an over-inflated idea of their powers of legal reasoning,

    Essentially it was some young police officers making a foolish decision to arrest even when being told the exact legal position. Then to compound matters the local low level hierarchy deciding to back them up, even when they knew that the charges wouldn’t stick. Rochelle considered that the only reason for the alternate charges was to save face for the young officers. The effect was for the police, the courts, and Rochelle to waste timer and money. On the police and courts side the costs would have been thousands of dollars at the very least.

    Now think how this would be presented to Howard Broad looking at stats? Is this presented as charged but lost the case? I’ll take a bet that they don’t measure not presenting a case

    Basically the police look like a archaic management structure from the late 19th or early 20th century.

  34. barnsleybill 34
    21 December 2008 at 9:36 am

    Lynn, I agree with your comments re INCIS. Having been on the wrong end of big IT projects that keep getting delayed in footstep with the price going up I have some sympathy for Doone over the massive cock-up that was INCIS. IT stands for incomplete task, and worse than the superior air of arrogance emanating from most IT people is the slippery bullshit that the sales people on these big projects vomit forth when trying to sell the upgrade before the base package has been stabilised.

    However, Helen Clarks concerns over INCIS will never serve as justification for what she did and said about him to remove him from his job.
    All of our shared concerns over the performance of the upper echelons of the Police need to include the way Doone was removed. This was not the beginning of this sorry saga but it is most definitely a very significant chapter.
    As for the SIG;
    If Broad did not know, he should be sacked.
    If Broad did know, he should be sacked.
    And a few others working on the top floor of Police HQ need to follow him.

    Footnote, Lynn I am surprised that Rochelle was charged with using a megaphone. Len Richards managed to avoid being charged with smashing somebody in the face with a megaphone.

  35. lprent 35
    21 December 2008 at 9:59 am

    bb: Basically you are wrong in the Len Richards incident. What I saw when I looked at the footage was a tight crowded situation and someone getting knocked by a megaphone when Len moved.

    To be able to convict on any assault charge you generally have to prove some intent. Otherwise people could be convicted of shutting a door and someone else walking into it.

    On the INCIS project, from  what I heard from people on the project, the biggest bugbear was an inflated initial spec for the early phases. This was complicated by  changed requirements coming in from the police all of the time. That meant that the programmers were trying to hit a moving specification target. That scenario inevitably leads to major project blowouts.

    It wasn’t helped with the hardware being delivered before the software was written. By the time that the software was ready for releases, the police were looking at having to upgrade the hardware.

  36. Moana 36
    21 December 2008 at 10:05 am

    Len got jostled, cough cough (bullshit) cough.

    INCIS – and the fact that the IBM software was never up to the job, lets be fair eh Lynn. OS/2 and whaever other load of dross they were pumping up the NZ Govts ass.

  37. lprent 37
    21 December 2008 at 10:11 am

    hs: I suspect an inquiry is where we are going to get to eventually. But it is probably going to require more public exposure about the issue to define the terms of reference.

  38. lprent 38
    21 December 2008 at 10:20 am

    ‘Moana’ or ‘enat’ – looks like my systems already know you. One in spam and the other in auto-moderation.

    Anyway, OS/2 was fine. The code was largely written in std C++ and SQL with the required platform independence layers. That was code that was designed to have a multi-decade level lifetime. So there was no real way to write in in one of the fashion languages that are here this decade and have no support the next – like visual basic, C# (in my opinion), etc etc.

    So who cares about the OS, the port would have been reasonably easy. I do this all of the time, and so does the whole open-source community, and every software company that isn’t locked to OS (ie the majority of them).

  39. Anita 39
    21 December 2008 at 10:29 am

    lprent,

    And public exposure to make sure any recommendations are followed through. The Bazley report even had to recommend that the OAG monitor the implementation of its recommendations.

  41. the sprout 41
    21 December 2008 at 11:35 am

    “When you have commentators as varied and coming from different political spectrums as those on “the standard’, whaleoil, kiwiblog plus Garth George and the Greens all shouting that something smells and we need an enquiry the obvious conclusion is we need an enquiry.”

    strange days indeed when i find myself agreeing with hs.

  42. Bill 42
    21 December 2008 at 11:54 am

    Blanket surveillance of, basically, innocuous groups and gathering info of individuals within them could be an expression of a ‘gateway’ mentality in much the same way as said mentality applies to drug use.

    The idea the cops might have is that in the present circumstances these groups and orgs ‘do what they do’ and it’s no big deal. However, given a shift in circumstances, these groups will be shown to be the incubators of far more dangerous predilections. Put in another context; today’s dope smoker is tomorrow’s evil junkie crim…a myth that enjoys a fair bit of traction in society at large in spite of it being an obviously bankrupt line of argument on so many fronts.

    So while we have legitimate and peaceful protests ( dope smokers), we must prepare for more serious political expressions of discontent (evil junkie crim). In order that we know how to deal with the latter scenario we must prepare and practise on the present situation as though it were the latter. The difference will not be the procedures, which cover both scenarios and are therefore useful and even necessary, but the depth of the action arising from those procedures. The institutional approach has to be indistinguishable from one scenario to the other because any other approach will lead to a state of unpreparedness.

    I don’t know if I’m expressing this very well. It’s much like being on a war footing in peacetime because you believe ( on no evidence) that a war is right around the corner. It’s crap. It’s not justifiable by any mark of reason. And yet it’s not an uncommon phenomenon.

    The danger is that over time so-called evidence builds up to support and justify your actions, but only because anything and everything is being twisted out of shape to fit wrong headed preconceptions.

    Meanwhile, the real ‘latter scenario’ catches you left field.

    [lprent: Just wrote a post that has that as part of its internal premise, but with the additional idea (in your terms) of the police suppling the drugs through third parties – the ‘sting’ operation]

  43. lprent 43
    21 December 2008 at 12:25 pm

    Anita: The Bazley report even had to recommend that the OAG monitor the implementation of its recommendations.

    I noticed that when I was digging through the stuff related to the implementation. That was an extraordinary step for Bazley to suggest. You’d have to wonder why she thought it was required. Because to me it really seems like she wasn’t sure that the recommendations would be carried out otherwise. In anycase, it wasn’t very trusting of the police.

    BTW: Have a look at this http://www.bentcops.org
    They’re very coy about who they are, but has some interesting material – almost obsessional reading…
    Jack Van der Lubbe from Wanganui according to the WhoIs.

  44. barnsleybill 44
    21 December 2008 at 12:49 pm

    Lynn, your inside knowledge on INCIS is obviously better than mine. And it is nice to see nobody trying to defend Clark on what she did to Doone.
    The Len Richards incident, whatever you are smoking…… PLEASE SEND SOME TO ME. Address available via email. Every right wing blogger in the country has stills and video of him lunging into the crowd and bashing the weirdy beardy in the face with that megaphone. I have conceded a number of points to you over the last 24 hours.

    It is xmas, be magnanimous and concede that one to me.

  45. barnsleybill 45
    21 December 2008 at 1:01 pm

    Lynn, to make it easier for you to understand how completely wrong your comment about Len Richards was I have put a little you tube up at my place for you to reconsider the comment. Your comment is reproduced above the you tube clip. I know there is unrelated stuff at the beginning but have a look and then tell me that someone got “knocked”.
    I will not link whore but if anybody else wants to see the footage of the ginga pugilist smash some weirdy beardy in the face, just click through my user name..

  46. lprent 46
    21 December 2008 at 1:16 pm

    I’ll have a look, and probably ask him next time I see him.

    Ummm all of this activism is not helping my programming…

  47. Anita 47
    21 December 2008 at 1:18 pm

    bb,

    I have looked at the Richards video, and I’m not surprised the Police didn’t charge. They have discretion and very rarely charge people for that kind of argy-bargy at protests unless they’re trying to get leverage on individuals or groups. Have a look at other similar protests and you’ll see an awful lot of pushing-and-shoving-and-arm-swinging and not a lot of arrests.

    Maybe they should charge everyone who does anything like that, maybe they shouldn’t, but they reality is that they don’t. When you see charges coming out of behaviour at a riled up protest you can be pretty sure they Police have a Plan (so cunning you could pin a tail on it…).

    But back on topic for a moment… considering Broad’s statements on Monday do you think it was incompetent or dishonest or set-up by a variety of his subordinates?

  48. barnsleybill 48
    21 December 2008 at 5:45 pm

    I think he was covering his sponsors.
    As I said earlier:
    If he knew he should be sacked.
    If he did not know he should be sacked.