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Focus on
Police Competence |
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Police Commissioner Rob
Robinson has been sent the report of an internal inquiry into the wrongful
imprisonment of three teenage girls for a crime they did not commit. The trio are seeking
compensation -- likely to be hundreds of thousands of dollars -- after being
convicted of an aggravated robbery and spending seven months in Auckland's Mt
Eden women's prison in 1999. They were freed when an
Auckland lawyer and a private investigator persuaded police to reopen their
case. The Court of Appeal later overturned the conviction and offered the
girls "sympathy". Lucy Akatere and Tania
Vini, both 17, and Krishla Fuataha, 16, said they were nowhere near the scene
of the crime in the Auckland suburb of Three Kings. Police apologised to
the girls but their lawyer Gary Gotlieb said they deserved compensation. The
seven months they spent in jail had changed their lives and seriously damaged
their education. Police began two
inquiries -- one into the original crime and an internal one into the way the
investigation was handled. Mr Gotlieb said
yesterday that the internal inquiry had been completed and a report sent to
Mr Robinson in the past week. He said it was an
understatement to say the situation had been dragging on too long. The report
would absolve the girls but what it found about the original police
investigation was the important issue. The trio had sent a
provisional application to the Government seeking compensation so a Queen's
Counsel could be appointed to consider the case. Mr Gotlieb said that
after Mr Robinson had considered the report it would probably be sent to the
Police Complaints Authority. It could be November before the situation was
resolved. Last year, he said the teenagers
could be seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. They were
trying to rebuild their lives and had returned to school. One had given
birth. |
