NZ Herald
February 18, 2004
Public needs reassuring about police
Editorial
The appointment of
a proper commission of inquiry into criminal sexual allegations against members
of the police is a considerable relief. As more women have come forward, and more
police officers have been named - two of them district commanders - it became
evident that public concern could not be satisfied with less than an
independent inquiry of high standing. The choice of two commissioners, Dame
Margaret Bazley and Justice Bruce Robertson, is
unusual but sensible for a subject that will involve delicate judgments of
sexual attitudes and consent.
That is not to suggest that each of the chosen pair alone could not be relied
upon to come to fair conclusions, but the dual appointment should preclude the
easy accusations of gender bias commonly heard when sexual behaviour is at
issue. Dame Margaret, a retired public service head, and Justice Robertson, a
High Court judge and president of the Law Commission, have yet to receive their
precise terms of reference. The legal considerations are delicate. A commission
of inquiry cannot rule on questions of individual criminal guilt, which can
properly be established only by a court of law. But this commission will have
to review the way the police investigated complaints alleging criminal
behaviour against their own in these, and perhaps other, cases.
If it finds those investigations inadequate, it may go as far as to imply that
charges ought to have been pressed. Certainly it will form a view as to whether
police who handled the women's complaints against other officers followed
normal criminal investigating procedure and it can also examine the conduct of
internal reviews for the police and the Police Complaints Authority.
The question is: would that range of inquiry be sufficient? The incidents that
have lately come to light raise concerns in the minds of many at what they call
the "culture" of the police, at least at one station, during the
1980s and early 1990s. "Culture" covers attitudes and behaviour very
much wider than actions with a criminal intent. If the police in certain towns
not so long ago suffered a collective delusion about their power and their
sexual appeal, the police administration needs to know about and deal with it.
The country needs to be assured that if some such culture did prevail at
Rotorua and Murupara, it was not a wider malignancy
and that it does not persist today. It might be tempting to ascribe the alleged
incidents to the attitudes of an era now well gone. But the mid-1980s were not
another age. Notions of sexual equality and recognition of women's rights were
well established by then. These complaints can quite fairly be judged by the
standards of the present.
Many might wish the commission's terms of reference to go even beyond police
attitudes to women and range into the area of sexual morality. The officers
accused in the 1986 Rotorua incident insist the complainant consented to sex
with them as a group. Many people might expect higher standards of behaviour
from men of the character they have come to expect in the New Zealand Police.
For the commission to venture into judgments of what might be appropriate
behaviour for police in their private lives, however, would be fraught with difficulty.
The best that may be hoped is that the very disclosure of these incidents,
albeit long after the fact, is a reminder to police officers that the public
expects better of them, and that even an unproven allegation of this kind is
likely to have unusual consequences. One senior officer, now suspended, had
already missed promotion. Others, now out of the force, are suffering the
publicity. The inquiry will add to their ordeal. Let us hope it also deals with
the women's accusations satisfactorily at last and reassures the public that
the reputation of the police overall is reliable.
Above all the commission should see that procedures for dealing with alleged
failings in the force are vastly improved.