34 COCK-UPS

‘Gung ho’ officer shot hole in former PM’s plane

20 November 2008

A Diplomatic Protection Squad police officer once shot a hole in the side of an airborne plane carrying former Prime Minister Jim Bolger, it has been revealed.

The DPS guards the prime minister and leader of the opposition, usually keeping a low profile.

But the decision to completely surround incoming Prime Minister John Key on election night with a tight ring of officers has raised questions about its tactics.

In a discussion panel on Radio New Zealand yesterday Mr Bolger’s former chief press secretary Richard Griffin said some officers were extremely gung ho and one had once shot a hole in the side of an airborne plane carrying the prime minister.

Asked about the incident today, Mr Griffin told NZPA it had occurred on an “Air Force VIP” flight in the 1990s.

He said DPS officers were supposed to take their Glock pistols out and disarm them.

“In the process of taking his Glock out and disarming it he managed to discharge it, in the air.”

He said there was no loss of pressure in the cabin and the flight continued, despite “a bit of panic”.

“No one was really quite sure what had happened.”

Mr Bolger was “sanguine” about the incident.

He said the officer was mortified by the incident and was no longer with the police.

Mr Griffin, a former Radio New Zealand political editor who was Mr Bolger’s chief press in the mid-1990s, declined to reveal more details, saying he did not want to embarrass the DPS.

“I don’t want to embarrass the DPS further, but it’s one of those things that’s vaguely amusing in retrospect.”

The DPS has said the heightened security for Mr Key on election night was purely to allow him to move unimpeded, due to the large number of supporters and media who wanted to get close to him.

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Navtej Singh’s family outraged

SHOCK revelations from the police internal review into the fatal shooting of liquor store owner Navtej Singh have left his already furious family with “serious concerns” about the police response to the horrific crime.

Navtej was gunned down during a raid on his liquor store on Riverton Road, Manurewa, on June 7. The 30-year-old died in Middlemore Hospital 27 hours later.

There was widespread outrage when it was later revealed police waited 26 minutes before allowing St John staff to enter the south Auckland store where Navtej lay fatally wounded on the floor.

His traumatised wife, Harjinder Kaur, his business partner and a close friend were in the store with a stricken Navtej, and a family spokesman told of how the terrified onlookers screamed for help.

But police still waited before entering the store and allowing ambulance officers to help Navtej even though customers had time to buy liquor during the wait.

Police and St John staff have defended the delay, saying it was an armed situation and best-practice procedures including waiting at a safe point had to be followed.

Detective Inspector Jim Gallagher said at the time police had to establish the gunman’s whereabouts to ensure no one else’s life was in danger.

But a source has told Sunday News the police internal review into the tragedy has revealed:

When one police car carrying weapons arrived at the Manurewa, south Auckland, scene, it was discovered the wrong keys had been taken to unlock the weapons cache. Officers had to wait for someone to rush back to the police station to get the correct keys.

An officer who was attending an aggravated robbery at the time of the call-out had to drop off a colleague and offender who were in his car to a police station before going to the fatal shooting scene.

Navtej’s father, Nahar Singh, speaking through interpreter and New Zealand Sikh Society spokesman Manpreet Singh, yesterday told Sunday News he was angered by the revelations.

“(The) police really … should have prepared themselves. If they forgot the key it is a serious concern,” Nahar said.

“They shouldn’t have forgotten the key, they should have prepared and everything should have been ready to come to the incident.”

Tasman District Commander Superintendent Grant O’Fee, who wrote the internal police review, declined to comment on the source’s revelations to Sunday News.

“The report has not yet been released publicly, so until such time as the commissioner wishes to do that I’m not really at liberty to discuss it,” O’Fee said.

Police National Headquarters also declined to comment, as a review of police conduct and procedures during the incident by the Independent Police Conduct Authority is still not complete.

“Out of courtesy to the authority and their complainants, we would not release an internal debrief document ahead of the authority’s deliberations,” a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Navtej’s family announced last month they had laid an official complaint with the IPCA. The review is expected to be completed in a few weeks.

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Knife found days after police hunt

05 October 2008

The knife police believe was used to fatally stab Good Samaritan Austin Hemmings was found by a contractor metres from where his body lay after an officer “forgot” to properly search the crime scene after working for 40 straight hours.

The blade was discovered by a garbage collector in a nearby rubbish bin five days after the hero dad-of-three died, Sunday News was told. The contractor found the knife under cardboard in the bin, which remained unchecked inside the police cordon.

And Sunday News can also reveal the man charged in connection with Hemmings’ death had been deported from Australia in 2002.

Inquiry head Detective Senior Sergeant Gerry Whitley admitted on Friday the knife had embarrassingly remained undiscovered under the noses of investigating officers.

“There are always moments in a homicide investigation where things don’t go to plan and this is one of those,” Whitley told Sunday News.

An internal inquiry had already been completed into why the officer carrying out a search of the area did not discover the knife in the nearby bin.

“And the simple answer to that is the person that was instructed to look in all those areas worked 40 hours straight, and when he came back from having a sleep he forgot to search this particular area,” Whitley said.

He wouldn’t elaborate on why the officer had worked a 40-hour shift, but said he wouldn’t be facing disciplinary action.

National’s police spokesman Chester Borrows last night said it was totally unacceptable for police officers to be working such long hours. He said the government had failed to adequately resource an overworked police force.

“New Zealanders will read about this and know the incident raises very serious questions,” Borrows said.

The bungled search is likely to spark more questions over police competence and staffing levels, with parallels between the delayed discovery of the knife in the Hemmings’ case and that of the investigation into the disappearance of Auckland mum An An Liu the mother of abandoned toddler Qian Xun Xue, dubbed “Pumpkin” whose body was found in the boot of her husband’s car two days after officers began searching for her.

“The public tolerance for this level of performance is zero,” Borrows said.

But Whitley said it would be wrong to draw comparisons between the Hemmings case and the investigation into the death of An An Liu.

“Every homicide investigation is different. The police are human beings, we cannot be 100 percent perfect all the time,” he said.

The most important thing was the fact the knife had been found, not how it was found.

“I would have loved the police to have found it but we are very lucky that just after we stood down the cordon the contractor came in to get what they were going to pick up,” he said.

Hemmings, 44, was stabbed to death 10 days ago after rushing to the aid of a distressed woman, who was trying to fend off an attacker outside her workplace in Auckland’s Mills Lane.

Eleven hours after the fatal stabbing, police arrested a transient man and charged him with assault. He is expected to face a murder count when he reappears in court on October 17.

For legal reasons, Sunday News is prevented from publishing details of why the man was deported from Australia.

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They’re only sorry their dirty/evil operating methods have been exposed.

July 09, 2008

It was “inexcusable” that the criminal who killed Debbie Ashton was out on parole when he caused the car crash that killed her, Acting Police Minister Phil Goff has said.

Twenty-year-old Debbie Marie Ashton died in December 2006 after Jonathan Alan Barclay’s speeding car crossed the centre line on Paton Rd, Hope, and crashed into her vehicle.

Barclay was a recidivist offender who had evaded prison by using his new identity under the police witness protection programme to be treated as a first-time offender.

State Services Minister David Parker today released the results of a Government inquiry launched last October into the circumstances around Debbie Ashton’s death.

Kristy McDonald QC found a series of system failures and errors by staff within both Police and Corrections led to Barclay remaining in the community and driving a car when he should not have been.

Phil Goff said the human errors should not have been allowed to happen.

“Systems should have been in place to avoid such errors leading to the tragic consequences which occurred in this case,” he said in a statement.

“Corrections and police accept in full the criticisms made and the recommendations to remedy the deficiencies that existed in the area of dealing with offenders who were witnesses and under the witness protection programme,” he said.

“The offender should have been recalled to prison when convicted of driving with excess breath alcohol and the decision not to was inexcusable,” Mr Goff said.

“Protection of identities under the witness protection programme is important but the paramount obligation of Corrections and police is to the safety of the community.”

He said fundamental changes had been made to the management of offenders on the programme who were on parole.

“I am assured by both Corrections and police that the recommendations if the inquiry to prevent any further tragedies of this nature will be fully implemented.”

Parents critical

Ms Ashton’s mother, Judy Ashton, said this morning she felt far from satisfied after the release of the report and apologies from Police and the Department of Corrections.

“This is like looking into a muddy puddle. I can’t see what is at the bottom of it. I don’t know what changes they have made, and how do we check those changes have been made?” she said.

“We relied on them to get it right the first time, so what’s to say they are not going to mess up a second time.”

Police and the Corrections Department had admitted they had got it wrong, she said, but “only after we have had to push….only after we started rattling chains”.

Mrs Ashton said the agencies had to have been aware when Barclay was sentenced to 5 1/2 years’ jail for manslaughter last year what had happened.

“And nobody made any attempt to come and apologise to us or talk to us until we started pushing for this inquiry,” she said.

It had taken nearly six months to get the draft ministerial report, and another seven months to get it finished.

“And these have been the longest seven months of my life.”

Mrs Ashton said she had not yet even been able to grieve for her daughter.

“If I had let myself go down that track, I wouldn’t have had the energy to (pursue the inquiry). That’s something I need to deal with once this has got some kind of conclusion.”

In a joint statement with her husband, Ted Ashton, she said: “We are so angry that an incompetent justice system allowed a convicted criminal on parole to run riot until he killed our daughter.”

“The part that hurts so much is that her death was totally preventable if police and Corrections had done their job properly.”

Report’s findings

Barclay had been relocated to Nelson in May 2006 under the police witness protection programme and given a new identity.

A Crown request for continued suppression of Barclay’s real name in connection with the programme was today rejected by Justice Simon France, who said the suppression covered only his assumed name.

In November, a month before the fatal crash, Barclay was convicted of driving with excess breath alcohol in the Nelson District Court. He was fined and disqualified from driving.

He failed to tell the police or the court his previous identity, and was dealt with as a first offender.

However, a month earlier, he had been disqualified from driving for 18 months and warned he would go to jail for further driving offences, after disclosing his previous name and his involvement with the witness protection programme.

Ms McDonald said there were no steps taken to ensure Barclay’s real identity was known by the court.

“There were no steps taken to ensure this did not happen or to ensure that the court knew his birth name, that he was on parole, or that he had previous convictions,” she said in her report.

“Not only have I concluded that there were a series of mistakes made by individuals, more significantly I have found that the systems, policies and practices in place at the time by the Department of Corrections and police were inadequate and contributed to these events.”

She said there were failures in communication between government departments and within departments there was a lack of clarity on reporting lines.

“Further, there was a failure within the Department of Corrections to provide proper direction and oversight to those managing a parolee in circumstances such as those that arose in this matter.”

‘Poor decisions’

Police National Manager of Crime Services, Superintendent Win van der Velde and Katrina Casey, General Manager Community Probation and Psychological Services this morning apologised for the mistakes.

“Katrina and I have recognised the role our respective agencies have played in the death of Debbie Ashton and we have both apologised in person to Debbie’s parents and family and expressed our deepest regret for their loss,” Mr van der Velde said.

He said staff managing Barclay’s parole put too much emphasis on the “covert nature” of the Witness Protection Programme.

“This approach meant the offender was not adequately managed and poor decisions were made at a number of key junctures.”

The technology available meant Barclay’s previous convictions were not linked to his new identity and communication between Corrections and Police was “inadequate”, Mr van der Velde said.

Ms Casey said it was important both organisations learned as much as they could from their mistakes.

“It’s an unfortunate reflection of the types of people we are managing, that when mistakes are made the consequences can be tragic,” she said.

“In this case, both agencies have made significant changes to address the deficiencies identified during this inquiry and we are committed to working together to ensure we keep our communities as safe as possible.”

Ms McDonald said all the individuals she had spoken to, and who had made mistakes, regretted them bitterly.

She said the majority of people under the witness protection programme had criminal backgrounds, often very serious ones.

“I have been told it is a necessary part of policing…and I have accepted this,” she said.

“What is clear though is that if police wish to maintain such a programme…a high level of monitoring and supervision of those individuals is required.”

‘Changes made’

Ms Casey said both agencies had addressed a number of the issues raised in Ms McDonald’s report - which was released to Government ministers last December - and the work was ongoing.

Corrections had developed clearer guidelines for the management of offenders on the Witness Protection Programme.

They included requiring all offenders on the Witness Protection Programme to be put on the Offender Warning Register.

Police had strengthened policy around the recording of contacts between witnesses and their case officers and the review of cases on “a weekly and monthly basis”.

They had also introduced an electronic monitoring system to ensure any contact between police law enforcement and a witness was automatically and immediately notified to the Witness Protection unit and National Manager.

Both agencies said they had developed clearer lines of communication with each other.

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Police get blame for P-attack on widow

July 05, 2008

A High Court judge has criticised police, blaming an attack on an elderly Howick widow by a violent P-fuelled man on a “chronic and unacceptable” blunder at Henderson police station.

Brett Stuart Wellm, 44, was sentenced to at least 17 years of preventative detention in the High Court at Auckland yesterday.

He previously admitted what Justice Rhys Harrison described as a “barbaric” attack on 83-year-old Howick woman Francis Gavin.

Wellm tricked his way into Mrs Gavin’s home with a bible before binding her hands and legs and attacking her with a pair of hedgeclippers and a spade in November last year.

He stole jewellery and alcohol from her home and left her for dead before setting her home on fire.

Justice Harrison said yesterday the attack would never have happened if police had a warning on their system noting that Wellm was wanted.

Wellm had absconded from his home detention from an earlier offence and had been recalled to prison by the Parole Board - a fact that Community Probation and Psychological Services says it advised Waitakere police of by fax.

Just a month before the attack, a non-sworn police staff member found no record of the warrant for Wellm’s arrest and turned him away when he tried surrendering himself in at Henderson station.

“There was no warrant in existence,” Justice Harrison said. “You were allowed - or in fact, I assume, invited - to leave the police station.

“[However], that can not explain why the non-sworn officer sent you away.

“At the very least, you should have been detained or referred to a sworn police officer.

“These crimes would never have occurred but for those chronic and unacceptable defaults.

“It will be for the authorities separately to consider the appropriate steps.

“I can only hope that they implement measures to ensure that an error of this magnitude is never repeated.”

Justice Harrison said Wellm had a “formidable list” of violent and premeditated offending.

“You display all the traits of a psychopathic offender who will continue to display crimes of serious violence as long as you are able,” Justice Harrison said.

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Police concede poor prosecution

24 May 2008

Police have conceded errors were made in the prosecution of accused rapist Aaron Farmer, but say that played no part in his conviction being quashed.

Farmer, a 38-year-old beneficiary, was found guilty by a jury of raping a 22-year-old South Canterbury woman as she walked home to Sydenham, Christchurch, after a night out on the town on September 1, 2003. He was sentenced to eight years jail in 2005.

However, the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction last year on the grounds that the jury did not get to hear important alibi evidence that may have swung the verdict, and a fresh trial was ordered.

Farmer was freed last June, after serving two years in prison for a crime he vows he did not commit.

Then came a dramatic twist in the case. Traces of DNA obtained from the victim’s cervical swab and fingernail scrapings were retested this year using updated, more sensitive techniques in the lead-up to the new trial. The results excluded Farmer as a donor of the DNA.

Last month, the Crown agreed to the retrial being dropped, saying the victim did not want to give evidence again.

The Christchurch District Court and the Court of Appeal criticised the police over aspects of how they handled the case. The Crown Solicitor also complained to the police after the trial about the officer in charge of the case, who has since left the police.

A month after The Weekend Press broke the story of Farmer’s freeing, the police have decided to front up to the criticisms.

Inspector Malcolm Johnston, Area Commander for Christchurch South, has reviewed the police file and found problems with the prosecution phase, rather than the investigation.

“I and the Crown Solicitor agreed that the investigation itself was very well done.

“There was a solid, yet circumstantial case against Mr Farmer. The prosecution phase, however, was particularly poor. But none of the shortcomings criticised by the courts played any part whatsoever in this man having his conviction quashed,” said Johnston.

“The Court of Appeal’s decision to quash the conviction was based solely on the inadequacies of the defence, rather than the police.”

The police’s case was that the woman got a clear look at her attacker for a good two minutes while he was on top of her. The rapist had very distinctive facial features which she described as “rat-like”. He was riding a trailbike around the city on a Monday between 2am and 3am when the woman was grabbed behind bushes on the corner of Stanley and Colombo streets.

“There were very few people around the city at this time of the morning,” said Johnston.

“If we were to write up on a board the similarities between the attacker and Farmer they are that both were male, Caucasian, aged in their late 30s, tall, wearing similar clothing, long hair, a white helmet and riding a trailbike.

“The complainant was adamant at trial that it was Farmer.”

Of the judge’s criticisms in court:

Police were criticised over failing to have exhibits in court, inadequate briefing of witnesses, and late disclosure of evidence.

Johnston said: “These are housekeeping matters and that is what I meant by aspects of the prosecution phase being poor. This is really sloppy. It does our reputation no good at all and was used extensively by the defence counsel at trial in an attempt to pick holes in our case.”

The interviewing police officer was criticised for conveying to Farmer during a videotaped interview that police had recovered his DNA from the victim, when they had not. The late Judge Murray Abbott said if Farmer had admitted the rape under those circumstances, a judge would have ruled the admissions inadmissible because they had been obtained unfairly.

Johnston agreed. “The detective should never have put to Mr Farmer that his DNA had been found. Clearly this is wrong. The detective was spoken to at the time and he immediately acknowledged it and apologised. He is an excellent police officer who took this criticism on the chin, learned from it and moved on. I don’t know why he did it. There’s no point in bluffing someone or lying to someone because it’s all on video and it is an absolute waste of time.”

Police were criticised over not having an identification parade.

Johnston: “It’s taken on board but it must be tempered by the fact that the identification parade is not compulsory. What the officers did wrong was that back in 2003 it was police policy for suspects to be offered an identification parade. I have spoken to the officers concerned and they tell me that they didn’t think they could get seven other people in Christchurch similar-looking to Mr Farmer and they felt it would be totally unfair on Mr Farmer if they were to have held an identification parade, bearing in mind how distinctive looking Mr Farmer is. I appreciate where the officers are coming from, but they should have offered Mr Farmer the opportunity of a parade. In the 28 years I have been in the police in charge of numerous homicides, thousands of sexual attacks, robberies and assaults, I have never had a suspect who wants to go into an identification parade.”

Johnston, who is the Canterbury police’s spokesman on DNA, also commented on the fresh DNA evidence which Farmer’s defence counsel, Simon Shamy, used to get his client discharged.

Forensic scientists from Environmental Science and Research (ESR) used a new technique which targets male DNA the Y chromosome and is particularly useful with mixed DNA samples.

Johnston said the technique involves pooling the Y chromosomes from all contributors.

“It is problematic for ESR to identify specific contributors from the final pooled DNA profile. There are a number of scenarios that exist, but involve speculation. One of the scenarios is that Mr Farmer is not the attacker.”

Johnston said police were still analysing the DNA evidence when Shamy applied for his client to be discharged.

Johnston said a “blond hair” found in the pubic hair of the victim, which Shamy raised as an issue after a reference in ESR documents, was not a hair. “In fact they were clothing fibres. And this was established at the initial trial.”

After the 2005 trial, Johnston reviewed the 10-prong complaint from the Crown Solicitor concerning the detective in charge. Johnston upheld five points and made recommendations.

The detective resigned before the matter was resolved.

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Detective rejects ’shoddy’ murder inquiry claim

May 29, 2008

Yesterday’s not guilty verdict in the Jack Nicholas murder trial came as a surprise to police who worked on the case, Eastern District crime manager Detective Inspector Sam Aberahama said today.

Mr Nicholas was gunned down on his remote farm northwest of Napier on August 27, 2004.

After deliberating for 13 hours, a High Court jury found Murray Foreman, 51, not guilty of the dawn murder.

The jury added the rider that it did not believe any member of the Nicholas family was involved in the shooting.

The defence team had implicated Mr Nicholas’ son, Oliver, during the trial.

Mr Aberahama said police were disappointed by the verdict, but accepted the court’s decision.

“This has been a lengthy and difficult inquiry and my staff have worked tirelessly to bring someone before the courts, but we must accept the jury’s decision as due judicial process,” Mr Aberahama said.

He rejected criticism by Foreman’s defence counsel that they conducted a shoddy inquiry, focusing on one person only during the course of the investigation.

“That is absolutely incorrect and has no basis of fact. There were many phases to the investigation that were thoroughly examined,” Mr Aberahama said.

Foreman’s counsel, Bruce Squire QC, today lashed out at the police investigation, labelling it “shoddy” and “selective”.

He told Radio New Zealand police had made the “fatal flaw” that characterised many investigations of picking a particular individual and trying to fit a case around them, instead of thoroughly investigating a crime and remaining open minded until all the evidence was clear.

“They simply picked the wrong man and they should have known it long before they charged him,” Mr Squire said.

Mr Aberahama said police would have a debriefing and would critique the investigation and in that respect, the case was not closed and police would follow up any new information.

“There is no new information for police to work on at this stage, but if anything new comes to light, we will gladly look into it,” he said.

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Was John Tims a Detective INSPECTOR prior to this cock-up?

Police adamant they charged the right person

May 23, 2008

Police are adamant they arrested the right person for the murder of the Kahui twins and say they will not be charging anyone else, including the babies’ mother, Macsyna King.

“There is no evidence to support a charge against any other person and that includes the mother, Macsyna King,” inquiry head Detective Inspector John Tims said last night.

“Everyone that was at Courtney Crescent [Mangere] over that weekend was considered a person of interest and we thoroughly investigated each person until we identified Chris Kahui and made the arrest.”

Mr Tims said the view that Mr Kahui was responsible had not changed after his acquittal and there were no plans to reopen the investigation or act on defence claims that Ms King was responsible.

“There is no new evidence. The defence brought no new evidence to trial, there will be no further investigation into this matter. As far as I am concerned the matter is closed - the jury has made their decision.”

Mr Tims said he was disappointed by the verdict but accepted the decision and thanked the jury for sitting through six weeks of evidence.

When asked if police had charged the wrong person with the twins’ murder, he said: “The jury has listened to six weeks of evidence and they have acquitted Chris Kahui. There is no new information that indicates anyone else is responsible for the death of the twins.”

Mr Tims is adamant that the evidence gathered during the investigation eliminated Ms King, despite defence claims she was responsible.

The defence called a witness who claimed Ms King had confessed to the murder and that confession was recorded on his cellphone.

However, Mr Tims said police had spoken to that witness and discredited the claims after analysing his phone and finding no such trace of the alleged confession ever having been recorded.

Mr Tims said the fact that Ms King might have been in the area on the night the twins died - despite initially saying she was nowhere near them - did not make her the killer.

While cellphone records indicated she was in Mangere that night, Mr Tims said, the time of the call did not match the time the crown pathologist says the injuries were inflicted so again the evidence did not fit.

Mr Tims said the decision to arrest and charge Mr Kahui was not taken lightly and happened only after the file had been thoroughly reviewed.

“There was a four-month investigation. During that time there was consultation with the Crown and medical experts. Based on the evidence gathered during the investigation, the Crown decided there was sufficient evidence to charge Chris Kahui.”

Responding to defence claims that the police investigation was a “disaster”, Mr Tims said, “Maybe it was just for the purpose of the courtroom.”

There was no forensic evidence to help to find the babies’ killer and the family’s “code of silence” during the initial months of the inquiry did not help the investigation run smoothly.

“But what I would say is that with any child death, those involved … are normally related to the dead child. With this comes the problem that the family have loyalties to each other, not always to the dead child.”

WHERE THE POLICE CASE FAILED

* Crown said Chris Kahui was responsible. Defence said Macsyna King was responsible.
* Crown said Macsyna was nowhere near the babies when they were injured. Defence proved otherwise by producing Emily King’s cellphone records that showed calls were made from Mangere. Macsyna was with Emily all night.
* Crown medical experts said the twins would have shown symptoms minutes after they were assaulted. Defence experts said injuries could have occurred several hours before symptoms showed.
* Defence said police failed to follow up claims by Macsyna’s former partner that she confessed to him and it was recorded on a cellphone. Police say they ruled out its significance after analysing the cellphone and finding no such recording was made.
* Macsyna was not interviewed for several months about the alleged confession because of police’s heavy workload. Police say the allegations were not proven and she had already been interviewed several times.

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May 09, 2008

The detective who arrested Chris Kahui for his sons’ murders has admitted police were too busy with a wave of violent crime to re-interview the twins’ mother about a development in the homicide inquiry.

Detective Sergeant Chris Barry told Kahui’s High Court murder trial yesterday police spoke to a man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, in August last year.

Kahui denies murdering Cru and Chris Kahui in June 2006 and has been on trial for the past four weeks.

Mr Barry said police “became aware” the man could have information relevant to the case and met him. As a result of that meeting Mr Barry said police investigating the twins’ murders wanted to re-interview the babies’ mother Macsyna King.

At the start of the trial Kahui’s lawyer, Lorraine Smith, told the court the man would say that Ms King confessed to killing the babies.

But police resources were so stretched that the interview never took place over the following eight months until the trial began.

“What I did want to do was try and conclude the investigations around what [the witness] had told police and I felt it was important that in respect of what he told us that we needed to re-interview Macsyna King,” he said.

“We wanted to re-interview Ms King but were under significant pressure at work supervising a squad of eight detectives.”

That team was dealing with a number of sex offences in Counties Manukau and then became swamped by a series of murders. “I was called out on the weekends on three occasions to deal with homicides,” he said.

Police didn’t get to interview her, and Mr Barry said he was conscious the man’s statement needed to be disclosed to Kahui’s defence team and Crown prosecutors.

It was eventually disclosed just six weeks before the trial began.

Crown prosecutor Richard Marchant put it to him that the timing was far from ideal.

“In an ideal world I would have liked to have provided it earlier than that … unfortunately that’s not the reality of the situation.”

Kahui’s defence lawyers are expected to open their case today.

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DNA evidence frees prisoner after two years

26 April 2008

A man who served two years in prison for the rape of a young woman in central Christchurch has been freed after fresh DNA tests appear to exclude him from the crime.

Aaron Lance Farmer, a 38-year-old beneficiary, was found guilty by a jury in April 2005 and sentenced to eight years jail for a rape he vowed he never committed.

A 22-year-old woman was dragged off Colombo Street into bushes and raped by a passing motorcyclist as she walked to her brother’s Sydenham home after a night out in the city on September 1, 2003.

“She was attacked - I believe that - which means that someone who attacked her is out there walking free and I did the time for their crime,” said Farmer, who has a criminal and psychiatric history.

The Court of Appeal has identified several problems with the trial, including that important alibi evidence which may have swung the jury was not presented by the defence.

Farmer was freed from jail on bail last June after the judges quashed his rape conviction and ordered a retrial. The judgment was suppressed until after the new trial.

In a dramatic twist this week, the Crown agreed to the retrial being dropped. It was due to begin in the Christchurch District Court on Monday.

Traces of DNA obtained from the victim’s cervical swab and fingernail scrapings were re-tested this year using more sensitive techniques.

The results excluded Farmer as a possible source of the DNA.

Farmer’s new defence counsel, Simon Shamy, applied last week to have his client discharged under the Crimes Act and, on Tuesday, Farmer was acquitted.

The Crown said it agreed to the discharge because the victim did not want to proceed with a second trial.

Farmer said it was an enormous relief after insisting for years that police got the wrong man.

“I didn’t do it,” said Farmer, whose previous convictions include disorder, trespass and assault.

“The police should put a proper effort into finding who did. They had a description back then and they should have done their job.”

Detective Inspector Paul Kench said the police were involved in the Crown’s decision.

“On this particular occasion Farmer was found guilty by a jury of his peers after evidence was presented in court. This conviction has now been quashed on appeal and no retrial will take place,” he said.

“The complainant wishes to move on with her life and we respect her wishes.”

The police investigation had been reviewed by a senior detective in 2005 and would be looked at again, following the conviction being quashed. The investigation would not be reopened.

“We have relooked at things over what’s been going on in the last few weeks but in terms of reopening the investigation and going out searching for something else, the reality is we’d be wasting everybody’s time,” Kench said.

The Court of Appeal judgment said the Crown’s case was not strong. It relied heavily on the accuracy of the victim’s identification of her attacker.

The Appeal Court highlighted that in a taped interview with Farmer, the detective gave the impression that DNA evidence implicated Farmer when it did not.

An incorrect impression was also given over the victim’s identification of his clothing.

The conviction was quashed on the grounds that the jury did not get to hear important alibi evidence that may have swung the verdict.

The appeal judges said although the evidence of a witness did not exclude the possibility that Farmer raped the woman, if accepted by the jury, it narrowed the “window of opportunity”.

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111 failure: Police weren’t sent to knife-point robbery

26 February 2008

Police have blamed the failure to send a patrol car to a 111 call from a customer witnessing a knife-point robbery on an inexperienced operator.

Jo Anthony called 111 from her cellphone just after 5pm on Saturday when two men with a knife entered a dairy in Omokoroa Beach in the Bay of Plenty.

She told the Bay of Plenty Times the operator, in the Auckland-based northern communications centre, ended the call saying “Ok, thanks very much,” and no police car arrived.

Police eventually visited the dairy yesterday.

Communications centre national manager Superintendent Steve Fitzgerald said police should have made the incident a priority and attended it.

“Certainly if I look at our volume of calls, the amount of mistakes, which do happen, and mistakes will happen from time to time, they are very very small, not that that would provide much comfort to the residents of Omokoroa.

“Principally we had a younger call taker, somebody who hadn’t been there that long, and who made an error of judgment,” he said.

The robbers fled the store, dropping a charity box they had stolen, and made their getaway in a blue station wagon.

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Police errors slowed hunt for murderer Burton - watchdog

Police should have acted with more urgency to serve arrest warrants on paroled convicted murderer Graeme Burton, the Independent Police Conduct Authority has found.

However, Authority head Justice Lowell Goddard today said it would be conjecture to assume the police beginning to hunt for Burton sooner would have prevented the crime spree which ended with Burton murdering Wainuiomata father of two Karl Kuchenbecker on January 6, 2007.

” I have to emphasise we cannot speculate about what might have happened had police stepped up their efforts sooner. It cannot be said that a different response from police would have resulted in Burton being found and being apprehended earlier,” Justice Godddard said.

The report said once police did act on the arrest warrant for Burton, their response was swift and appropriate. There was no criticism of the two officers who came face to face with Burton on January 6 - an encounter which ended with Burton being shot and severely wounded.

Burton’s life was possibly saved by the care he received from medical officers, the report said. His wounds resulted in his right leg being amputated.

The report said it was correct procedure for the two officers involved with the shooting to have been armed, and praised their bravery in confronting the heavily-armed Burton.

“We are making some criticisms of police in this report, but it is important to remember that Graham Burton is the real culprit here,” Justice Goddard said.

The report found police were too reluctant to put information they had about Burton’s illegal activities - including claims he had committed a series of armed assaults on Wellington drug dealers - into an affidavit to assist with an early recall to prison.

They also failed to note two arrest warrants for Burton until more than a week after the first had been issued.

The report said the Probation Service asked for an affidavit on Burton’s suspected activities on November 30, but police declined, fearing it would reveal the identities of their informants.

The report said police could have given an affidavit based on partial information that did not reveal the identity of their sources.

Police began an official investigation into Burton on November 28, a day after the Parole Board told them they would immediately recall Burton to prison if fresh charges were laid against him.

However, the report said crucial errors were made.

It found police failed to up the ante on Burton when an arrest warrant was issued by the courts, on December 22, due to Corrections Department legal action over his parole breaches.

A missed phone message meant police were not aware of it until after a second warrant was issued by the courts on December 29 - effectively recalling Burton to prison - which was faxed to Wellington central police station.

Even then, police took three days to properly action the warrant.

The report said there were inadequate lines of communication between the Probation Service, the Parole Board and police, but that police should have been aware of the developments anyway if they were paying proper attention to the case.

“It would appear that although some police members knew that a warrant had been issued as early as December 22 and there was an operation in place to locate Burton, no one took an active interest in or ownership of the situation, which then resulted in an unreasonable delay.”

The report also faulted the Parole Board notification to police on December 29, saying it lacked a clear indication of the urgency of the situation.

The report recommends:

* Police review their management and handling of arrest warrants to avoid delays apprehending high risk offenders;

* that police and the Corrections Department, which incorporates the Probation Service, review how they collaboratively handle high risk offenders;

* police ensure that all staff are aware of their powers to arrest some parolees without a warrant;

* police and Corrections review how they handle sensitive information like that the Corrections Department wanted police to put in an affidavit.

The report also looked at how police dealt with Burton on the day he was arrested.

That section of the report found police acted entirely properly in shooting Burton after he confronted police sent to arrest him.

The report details how the first pair of police on the scene after the reported shootings in firebreaks between Lower Hutt and Wainuiomata, called for a cordon to be set up around entry and exit points.

However they were then confronted by a shotgun-wielding Burton as they sought to get out rifles from the boot of their police car.

They initially backed off.

When they returned Burton was taking the police rifles out of the boot of the police car.

When they called out “armed police” Burton looked up and pointed a weapon at one of the officers.

An officer fired at Burton three times, incapacitating him with a shot to the leg.

Burton has since been sentenced to preventive detention for the murder of Mr Kuchenbecker.

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Police errors helped rapist continue offending

February 16, 2008

A rapist who continued to offend while on bail was helped by “catalogue of errors” by police during their investigation.

Fanuaea Leatigaga sexually violated a 15-year-old schoolgirl and raped a 21-year-old pregnant woman at knifepoint before being caught, The Press newspaper reports.

He was jailed for 11 years on multiple sex charges, including two rapes.

An Independent Police Conduct Authority investigation in December highlighted a “catalogue of errors” by police, including not assigning temporary responsibility for files while officers were on leave and failing to identify the offender through the police intelligence (Intel) system.

The mother of a 16-year-old victim who phoned police twice with the offender’s car registration is devastated she was unable to prevent two more victims being harmed.

Police did not follow up on the car registration number, despite being given it on two occasions.

The mother who gave police the registration number said “had the police acted on my information, the offender would not have had the opportunity to carry out these two horrendous crimes.”

The mother first reported Leatigaga’s registration number to police after he was spotted driving a car. Nothing was done.

Five days later, Leatigaga sexually violated a 15-year-old girl in the grounds of Aranui High School.

A few days after that, the 16-year-old saw Leatigaga again in the supermarket where she worked. Her colleagues again noted the registration number and it was reported to police the next day. Nothing was done.

The day after the number was reported for the second time, Leatigaga broke into a Linwood home and raped a 21-year-old pregnant woman at knifepoint.

Leatigaga was eventually caught and admitted two rapes, three counts of sexual violation, one of indecent assault and aggravated burglary.

He was jailed for 11 years, with a seven-year minimum non-parole term.

Police said Leatigaga was on bail at the time, which the crown had opposed. Had he been brought before a court, it was probable that he would have been bailed again.

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Oops: Cop shoots up station

Wednesday, 23 January 2008

A Palmerston North police firearms instructor is in the gun after a live round was fired in the city’s Church Street station late last year.

It happened when a police officer was being trained in the use of a newly issued semi-automatic .223 known as the M4 Bushmaster.

The bullet penetrated an internal wall and flew over the head of an officer sitting in the adjacent office before disintegrating as it smashed through an outside window.

But acting city police chief Peter Thurston denied it was a narrow miss, as suggested in information provided to the Manawatu Standard.

However, he was quick to agree that any accidental discharge of a gun was bad news anytime.

There was an internal investigation into the incident - believed to have occurred in November - and the instructor will be disciplined.

Mr Thurston couldn’t say what would happen to him because a recommendation hadn’t yet been acted upon.

Mystery still shrouds how a live round came to be in the gun the police officer was handling.

All practice rounds, known as drill rounds, were accounted for, Mr Thurston said.

Drill rounds are in effect blank or dummy rounds, which are used for such training purposes.

Mr Thurston said there was no danger to the public because the fragmenting round, which was not found, either landed on a roof at the back of the station, or on empty ground.

The policeman involved in the incident was one of a group of about three who was doing “transition” training because he wasn’t on duty when the new guns were introduced, replacing a bolt-action .223 weapon.

He was having one-on-one training at the time, called stoppage drills.

The instructor had loaded the magazine so the presence of a live round was his responsibility.

Mr Thurston said as a result of the incident, police throughout the country were told to inspect and audit their drill rounds to make sure no live bullets got into the process elsewhere.

He said as far he knew nothing like the Palmerston North incident had happened anywhere else.

“It’s never happened before. It was a one-off,” he said.

But a worried source told the Standard: “I am concerned that members of the public are at risk.

“Are they still training this way today?

“And if they are, are they going to do anything with regard to the safety of training with firearms?”

Mr Thurston said the officer should obviously have taken more care.

The location of such training in the station is now being looked at so that in the unlikely event of anything like it happening again, nobody would be at risk.

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The 111 call system is again under attack after it took police more than an hour to get a patrol car to an Auckland home where two distressed and partially dressed teenagers ran screaming for help at 6am yesterday.

The teenagers - one wearing only a towel - ran to the property to call 111 after their first emergency call cut out. They said people in a nearby house in Haverstock Rd, Sandringham, had taken their car keys and held them in the house against their will.

The house is believed to be occupied by King Cobras gang members and has become what nearby residents have called a “house of terror”.

Police, who were told not to go to the home the 111 call was made from because the occupants were scared it could identify them, are said to have arrived there anyway.

But in an apparent blunder reminiscent of the Iraena Asher case, they took an hour to get there and had received four further phone calls before then. The teens ended up calling a taxi and left before police arrived.

Residents at the home the girls ran to are fearing for their lives because one of the gang affiliates was caught trying to get into the property at 8.30am yesterday. He left when he was yelled at by a neighbour.

“It’s one of these houses of hell. It has a long history,” a Neighbourhood Support member said. “The residents in that part of the street are terrified.”

He said he was concerned by yesterday’s slow response from police, the fact that the first call was cut off with no one calling back to ensure the girls’ safety and that police went to the home where the call was made despite being told not to.

He said he called 111 about four times and had to repeat details of the incident every time.

“I still think people’s lives were at risk. It sounded to me like it was just a complete shambles.”

The Neighbourhood Support member will be laying a complaint with the Police Complaints Authority.

He was further disappointed because the incident occurred just three days after a Neighbourhood Watch meeting during which police told residents to call 111 to report problems they had raised about the gang house.

Inspector Willie Taylor of the police northern communications centre said he had called for an explanation from staff.

A cursory look showed some inconsistencies in the details between the first call to police made by the girls and the calls made by the neighbour, which could have been a factor in the attendance of the incident.

But Mr Taylor said that still did not explain why it took an hour.

IRAENA ASHER

* On October 10, 2004, Iraena Asher called 111 asking for help.
* The police call centre dispatcher sent a taxi to collect her from Piha.
* The taxi went instead to Paihia Rd, Onehunga.
* A review of the 111 system was launched after her disappearance.
* Her body has never been found.

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Police blunder leads to attack on widow

02 December 2007

The man charged with brutally attacking an elderly widow on Monday tried to give himself up to police just weeks earlier, but was sent away because nobody could find the arrest warrant issued after he absconded from home detention.

Four weeks later the man allegedly used a Bible to trick his way into his 83-year-old victim’s house, then left her bound hand and foot, face down and unconscious in a pool of blood in the basement of her Auckland home after setting the top floor alight.

Police have apologised to the woman for what they described as a “notification systems failure” which occurred after the man and a friend went to Henderson police station on October 30 at 6.30am to hand himself in.

It is the latest in a series of blunders and miscommunications between court and parole officers and the police which have left violent criminals free to reoffend.

Last week, the Wellington coroner heard how a warrant to arrest Graeme Burton lay in court and police in-trays for 13 days, delaying the search for the convicted murderer who then killed again.

Last month there was public outrage about bail laws after Michael Curran was convicted in Rotorua of murdering two-year- old Aaliyah Morrissey while on bail awaiting trial for the manslaughter of Natasha Hayden in January 2005.

And a ministerial inquiry is being held into how Jonathon Allan Barclay, a 26-year- old with 27 convictions, came to be on parole when he killed Debbie Ashton in a head-on smash south of Nelson, last December.

In the latest case, a warrant had been issued for the man’s arrest on October 23 after the Parole Board was alerted to the fact he had absconded while on home detention.

Waitakere police commander Inspector Mark O’Connor confirmed that when the man, 43, tried to give himself up at the Henderson station the night shift attendant allowed him to walk free after finding no computer record on him.

Later that day the man’s friend phoned his probation officer to tell her what happened.

After the phone call, Corrections staff sent police another copy of the warrant.

O’Connor said senior police had visited the elderly woman at Middlemore Hospital to apologise for the systems failure, “a result of human error”.

“We are also looking at further enhancing our approach to how we follow up on risk offenders in the community.”

O’Connor said police made “numerous inquiries and efforts” to apprehend the man when he absconded on home detention, but they initially went to the wrong house because they had an incorrect address in their system.

By the time they went to the correct address on November 24, he had been gone a month.

On Monday, he allegedly used a Bible to persuade his victim to allow him to enter her Howick home where he allegedly bound her arms and legs and left her face down in her basement in a pool of her own blood, before setting fire to her home.

The man was himself taken to Middlemore Hospital after badly cutting his arm while trying to escape from a nearby house where he was arrested.

At a special bedside hearing he was subsequently charged with assault, threatening to kill, arson and two counts of aggravated burglary. Police have said there is a strong chance he would also be charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm or attempted murder.

The victim was conscious and in a stable condition on Friday after having surgery the previous day for serious head injuries.

The accused had become a Christian and attended an evangelical church in West Auckland, initially living with a member of that church. He was later given Parole Board permission to move into a one-bedroom flat by himself.

He breached home detention just once in June when he was 90 minutes late for his curfew. Corrections gave him a written warning.

The accused was moved out of Middlemore Hospital on Wednesday and will appear at Manukau District Court on Tuesday.

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November 16, 2007

TVNZ can broadcast a videotape which shows a man cleared of murder confessing to the crime, the Supreme Court has ruled.

Noel Clement Rogers, who was accused and then cleared of the murder of Far North woman Katherine Sheffield, took the case to the country’s highest court trying to prevent the tape being aired.

But the court today ruled that Rogers’ right to privacy was outweighed by the interests of open justice.

However, the Supreme Court judges criticised the police for releasing the tape to the media in the first place.

TVNZ’s Sunday programme wants to screen the videotape leaked to it by police in which Rogers confessed to and reconstructed the murder. Ms Sheffield was murdered in 1994.

The videotape was intended to be used as evidence in Rogers’ murder trial, but it was ruled inadmissible because it was obtained in breach of his human rights.

TVNZ had previously won an appeal against a High Court ruling which prevented publication of the tape.

At the beginning of a long legal fight, the High Court said the broadcast of the videotape of Rogers would amount to a wrongful invasion of his privacy. It issued a permanent injunction restraining the broadcast by TVNZ.

The case then went to the Court of Appeal, which acknowledged the privacy issue but decided the low-level privacy interest was outweighed by the high-level public interest in the videotape’s contents.

Rogers appealed to the Supreme Court, which today upheld the Court of Appeal’s ruling, handing victory to TVNZ.

Rogers’ uncle, Lawrence Lloyd, was convicted in 1995 of Ms Sheffield’s manslaughter and served seven years of an 11-year sentence before his conviction was overturned in the Court of Appeal in 2004.

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Boy hurt in case of mistaken identity

Nov 1, 2007 7:56 PM

A 16-year-old boy has a suspected broken arm after being tackled to the ground by police in east Auckland.

The innocent teenager was mistaken for a thief.

Piripono Karaka was running late for school and unwittingly ran into the path of a police pursuit.

A car had been stolen and the thief had taken off on foot but detectives grabbed Karaka by mistake.

“They threw me to the ground and then grabbed my hands and put them behind my back and he had his knee on my back and I was trying to tell him I couldn’t breathe,” says Karaka.

“I was in shock. By the time I got into the principal’s office I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’ve got to get out there.’ It was like coming across a fatal car accident and just having to calm and use your nerves,” says witness, Danielle Bergin.

Karaka has a suspected broken hand after the incident. He had been handcuffed and put in the police car but then it came over the radio that another officer had the actual suspect.

“Then he just shook my hand and said no hard feelings and then he let me go,” says Karaka.

“He felt that he had the culprit. Well, he made a mistake and he made a mistake to pick on the wrong family. We’re not going to stand for it,” says Karaka’s grandfather, Sam Davies.

In a statement police acknowledge this was a case of mistaken identity and they say the officer involved has already explained to the boy’s family and the school why they thought he was the suspect and why he was detained.

“I didn’t feel that that was good enough. I mean there was a suggestion of an apology but there was not an apology,” says Davies.

But an apology may not be too far away. Police plan to head to the school as soon as possible to say sorry and to put the record straight to students - that they made a mistake.

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Police ignored Bentley tips - callers

2 November 2007

People who say they have leads in the Kirsty Bentley murder case claim police are not interested in hearing from them.

The officer in charge of the nine-year investigation, Detective Inspector Greg Williams, yesterday defended charges of “tunnel vision” in his investigation after he was criticised in a TVNZ programme on Wednesday night.

He said the investigation had looked at “well over 300 persons of interest, many of whom are yet to be eliminated for a variety of reasons”.

The Press has received several phone calls since the show, The Investigator, aired from people who claim police do not want to hear their information.

One tipster, who feared repercussions if he was named, said police “didn’t want to hear about” his information because it differed from the “pet theory” that Bentley was killed by either her father, Sid, or brother, John. He said he knew of a potential suspect who had known the Bentley family, had a history of violence towards women and had a friend who had Commer vans similar to the one being sought in the early years of the investigation.

The man said he had video footage of the vans that police could view.

“They never rang me back. They seemed to be hell-bent on arresting just those two people,” he said.

Another man rang The Press several times saying he had seen a car carrying an upset-looking, young blonde woman in the area where Bentley’s body was found.

He had had no interest from police.

Sid Bentley said yesterday he was “reasonably well-impressed” with the show, which had gone to pains to prove his and his son’s innocence.

It “baffled” him that police had ignored a lead about a Commer van when it was seen near his house and in the Camp Gully area where his daughter’s body was found – “a pretty massive coincidence”.

Williams said he had declined to be part of the TV show because “the overriding decision for us must always be that there is some investigative value for the case”.

He said the investigation had been reviewed three times – in 1999, 2001 and in June last year.

He advised anyone with information to call the duty central city investigations inspector.
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Bentley cloud of suspicion questioned

31 October 2007

A television investigation into the murder of Ashburton teenager Kirsty Bentley questions why police allow her father and brother to remain under a cloud of suspicion.

The Investigator, a series that re-examines unsolved murders, is to look at the Bentley case tonight.

Bentley disappeared on New Year’s Eve 1998. Her body was found several weeks later covered by branches in the Rakaia Gorge.

The Christchurch officer in charge of the Bentley case, Detective Inspector Greg Williams, declined to have anything to do with the show.

The show presents a defence of what are thought to be the police’s prime suspects, Bentley’s father Sid and brother John, and criticises Williams for letting the two live under a cloud of suspicion for the past nine years.

The show’s writer and producer, Bryan Bruce, said Williams’ attitude was frustrating.

“To shut off that opportunity by not talking to the media – how clever is that?” Bruce asked. “What we’ve got is a detective who is at odds with the media. We have a right on behalf of the public to say `Why isn’t this solved? How can we help?”‘

Williams declined to comment last night.

Last night, Sid Bentley said he had “a totally clear conscience” and insisted his son was also innocent.

“Had my son done it I would have been the first person to take him down to the police station. If I was going to do a runner, I would have gone a long time ago.”

He planned to watch tonight’s episode. Retired police officer Lance Corcoran, who worked on the Bentley case, was also puzzled by Williams’ non-cooperation.

“He hasn’t made any information available. It’s not the view I would have taken if I had the opportunity to get new information.”

Corcoran said the Bentley case was getting important new leads months after the death.

“It was that sort of case. The opportunity to jog the memory should have been taken,” he said.

The Investigator makes the case for Sid and John’s innocence, and then asks whether police have become “so focused on the family that they are now blind to the possibility that Kirsty may have been murdered by a stranger”.

A civil rights lawyer is interviewed who says the Bentleys should apply to the High Court to force police to eliminate them as suspects.

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Police handling of Qian Xue case gives cause for concern

September 23, 2007

US Marshals believe they still don’t have the power to arrest Xue
The name of the street in Mt Roskill that was home to Nai Yin Xue, his wife An An Liu and their 3-year-old daughter Qian Xun Xue could scarcely have been more bitterly ironic. Keystone Ave was assuredly not named after the comically incompetent Keystone Cops of the silent-era slapstick films. But the police operation that began after little Qian Xun was discovered, alone and crying, in Melbourne’s Southern Cross railway station on Saturday morning invites comparison with the bumbling oafs of the silver screen.

No one seeing the closed-circuit television footage of the now-fugitive Nai Yin Xue bending down to whisper in Qian Xun’s ear before walking away without so much as a backward glance could fail to be deeply affected by it. What is plain is that a young girl, whose mother is dead and whose father has abandoned her, is the victim of the most heart-rending family tragedy. But what is equally plain is that there are very important questions to be asked about the conduct of the investigation.

The inescapable arithmetic of international travel - the time taken to get from the station in Melbourne’s Docklands to the airport, check in, board and fly from Melbourne to Los Angeles - argues that at least a dozen and as many as 16 hours elapsed between the time Qian Xun was discovered and the time Xue touched down in California. It would have been a superhuman police effort indeed that identified the girl - who was carrying no documents - and established her father’s onward travel plans in time to intercept him when he landed at LAX. Nobody can fairly criticise the police for their failure to manage that. But elsewhere the investigation seems to have been characterised by a lumbering attention to the niceties of procedure that is hard to tell apart from inertia.

Most concern centres on the car outside the Keystone Ave address in which the body of An An Liu was found on Wednesday. The police have defended the time that it took to open the car’s boot on the grounds that they needed to get a search warrant - “It’s not just a matter of breaking the windows and getting in,” said Detective Sergeant Simon Scott. He also said the delay between getting the warrant and executing it was necessary so that staff new to the inquiry could be “brought up to speed”.

But none of this goes anywhere near explaining why the car remained outside the police cordon - to be touched and leant on by anyone who passed by - right through the period when the warrant was being sought. Even assuming that the obtaining of the warrant was a cumbersome legal process - and warrants have been issued in short order by Justices of the Peace in circumstances much less serious than this - why was such scant care taken of a car, plainly festooned with Chinese writing, outside the house of a Chinese woman for whose safety police said they held grave fears. A police spokeswoman’s claim that “we don’t just go busting into things” and “we have to make sure any evidence is not going to be contaminated” seems more than a little wan.

Many other matters cause concern, among them the five-day delay before US authorities were requested to look for the fugitive, and the fact that it is possible for a man to leave the country with his daughter even though court orders were in force banning him from having any contact with her.

Outright condemnation of police and others’ conduct is certainly ill-advised and may yet turn out to be unfair. It may transpire that the case raises questions about whether the police are adequately resourced to deal with cases within immigrant communities where cultural and language barriers stand in the way of easy resolution. But the case of little Qian Xun will require a lot of work long after what happened to her mother and father has been explained.
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Under Their Noses. “slack” Kops defend the indefensible.

September 20, 2007

Police said last night they were making no apologies for the time it took to find the body of an Asian woman in the boot of a car they had seized 16 hours earlier.

A warrant to seize the Honda Rafaga was granted at 9pm on Tuesday night but police did not find the body, believed to be that of missing woman An An Liu, until 1pm yesterday during a forensic examination.

The car, registered to Ms Liu’s fugitive husband Nai Yin Xue, had been parked outside their Mt Roskill home since at least Monday.

Detective Senior Sergeant Simon Scott said the delay was a result of police conducting a “thorough inquiry here and doing thorough investigations”.

Mr Scott said police spent Tuesday trying to obtain a search warrant for the car but it was not granted until 9pm.

It then took a further two hours before the car was towed to a secure location.

Yesterday morning the forensic examination was delayed “a little bit longer than it usually would” be, while police underwent a briefing on the case, which included bringing staff new to the inquiry up to speed.

Mr Scott said once under way the forensic examination had to be carried out according to procedure.

“We haven’t had the keys for that vehicle. It’s just not a matter of breaking the windows and getting in.”

He said the examinations were not as easy as shown in television programmes such as CSI.

“These things don’t take minutes, they could take days or weeks. We are wanting to do a thorough investigation into that vehicle and we are not going to be rushed,” he said. “We are working for An An and her family and we want to gather the evidence and prosecute the offender and that’s what we are going to do.”

Police Deputy Commissioner Operations Rob Pope said he also had every confidence in the investigation team.

“There are many forensic and legal requirements to be taken into account when dealing with an item of potential evidential value. Following proper process in these matters can be critical to the conclusion of any trial process.”

Auckland City Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty said “we don’t just go busting into things”.

“We have to make sure we are in a very secure area where any evidence is not going to be contaminated, where there’s not going to be any people who are offended or distressed by what we might uncover. We needed to make absolutely sure that the processes that we used are correct.

“Our staff, including myself, have been working exceedingly long hours to make sure this investigation is carried out appropriately. We are not going to fall into the trap of fitting into the general population’s agenda. What we need to do is do things properly. Like I said, there is no apologies for doing the job right.” (Yeah right!)

When asked if there was a chance the woman might have been alive but died in the time it took for police to open the boot, Ms Hegarty said: “I’m not going to speculate on that but we haven’t had any reported sightings of An An since 4.35 last Tuesday.”

Auckland defence lawyer Barry Hart last night criticised the time police took to obtain the search warrant and find the body, saying it appeared “slack”.

Mr Hart said warrants could be granted by a Justice of the Peace if police had “reasonable grounds” to conduct a search. (Make that ‘if the Kops ask for one.’)

“In my experience police get search warrants often when they’ve got very little evidence to justify it, so it seems absolutely ridiculous if they’re suggesting that it took a lot of time and it’s a great formal process when in reality it’s not … it sounds to me that they’ve just been a bit slack.”

* The boot of the abandoned car outside a house in Keystone Ave, Mt Roskill, was the most obvious of places.

* And yet it took 45 hours from the time police first went to the street before those searching for An An Xue looked inside.

* When they finally got around to it, they found the body of a woman that must have been there for at least six days. * Why it took them so long is just one of many questions arising from a sensational case that in some ways resembles the Keystone Kops.

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‘We’re not the Keystone Cops’ - top police

21 September 2007

Top police brass have leapt to the defence of detectives investigating the murder of Auckland woman Anan Liu, saying suggestions of incompetence are unfair.

Deputy police commissioner Rob Pope held a press conference at police national headquarters yesterday, in a bid to dispel “misconceptions” about the handling of the case.

The Auckland inquiry, headed by Detective Senior Sergeant Simon Scott, has been under fire over perceived delays in the investigation.

Police have copped flak for taking two days to search the car in which Mrs Liu’s body was found.

The car had been parked outside the home in Keystone Ave, Mt Roskill, she shared with her husband and three-year-old daughter, while police, media and the public walked past and even leaned on it.

Questions have also been raised about the time taken to notify international policing agency Interpol, about Ms Liu’s husband Nai Yin Xue, who abandoned his daughter at a Melbourne train station before fleeing to the United States and is now the main suspect for Mrs Liu’s murder.

Mr Pope said he had complete confidence in Mr Scott’s team.

“The investigation is being run by highly skilled and competent officers with considerable experience.”

One former top detective said yesterday that police inaction and failure to find the body was “absolutely appalling.”

Auckland criminal lawyer Barry Hart accused police of being “slack” for taking so long to find the body, and Peter Williams, QC, said police had made a “colossal mistake” by not searching the car earlier.

Mr Pope said branding the inquiry police as “Keystone Cops” showed a lack of “understanding about the depth of the inquiry that has been undertaken”.

He confirmed police became interested in the car late Tuesday afternoon, but said detectives had made “appropriate operational judgment calls”, based on “well-heeled and well-trialled” police procedures.

“Had we had any reasonable belief someone was alive … we would have taken different action.”

Mr Pope said pre-emptive or unauthorised entry of a vehicle would mean evidence could be regarded as tainted and potentially lost in the event of a prosecution.

Adequate information was needed before a warrant to search the car could be obtained.

“The public perhaps have a lack of understanding about the amount of detail and painstaking requirements to seize all relevant forensic evidence, whether it is a vehicle, house, bodies and the like.”

He rejected suggestions police had allowed possible forensic evidence from the car to become contaminated by leaving the silver Honda on the roadside.

A search warrant was obtained “within hours”, he said.

“It was seized and secured as soon as it became of interest to police.”

Detective Senior Sergeant Simon Scott said the focus of the police inquiry was now on finding Nai Yin Xue, who flew to Los Angeles from Melbourne shortly after abandoning Qian Xun.

“We have a warrant for Mr Xue’s arrest in New Zealand for the murder of Anan Liu and the abduction of their daughter, Qian Xun Xue,” he said.

“We have good reason to believe he is in the United States of America.”

Los Angeles police said they were only contacted by Interpol yesterday as there was no warrant out for Mr Xue’s arrest.

However, they said a notice had arrived by midday informing them Mr Xue was wanted urgently.

Mr Pope said an Interpol advisory was sent between Canberra, Wellington and Washington late on Sunday and updated at midday on Tuesday.

Ms Liu was last seen alive at a childcare centre in suburban Balmoral last Tuesday, September 11. Mr Xue and his daughter left Auckland International Airport two days later.
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Police and Customs drop the ball

September 22, 2007

The New Zealand Police have not covered themselves with glory in the case of the abandoned little girl their Australian counterparts named Pumpkin.

The name, her compelling face and especially the film of her father leaving her at a Melbourne railway station last Saturday brought this case more public interest than perhaps it held for the police initially, but the police had more reason than the public at that point to fear for the child’s mother.

The police file on the child’s deserter could have told them that a year ago he had attacked her mother with a knife during an incident in which the child was hurt.

The man, Nai Yin Xue, had held a kitchen knife to his wife’s stomach as she held their daughter in her arms and he threatened to kill her.

For that he was convicted in the Waitakere District Court and told he would be sentenced if he offended again.

He did, in another violent episode this year that caused police to confiscate a sword and his passport. They had to drop criminal charges when his wife declined to give evidence.

When the police learned last weekend he had abandoned his child in Melbourne they also knew they had handed him back the sword and passport on the day he left and they could not locate his wife.

Still they were not moved to treat the case as more than a missing person investigation.

The police are not the only law enforcement agency to have unwittingly facilitated Xue’s flight.

When he passed through Auckland Airport with his little daughter in tow there were court orders in force against him forbidding him from initiating contact with his wife or daughter.

But for an alert to appear on airport immigration screens, it turns out, a separate order preventing him removing the child from this country would have been necessary.

This is bizarre. If a person is subject to a domestic protection order preventing contact with a child the fact should be flagged for every law enforcement agency that might call up his name. To note only specific non-removal orders is ridiculously bureaucratic and shows how lumbering our uniformed services have become.

The performance of the police, though, surely reached its nadir in Keystone Ave, Mt Roskill, where Xue’s car sat for six days outside the house of his missing wife with her dead body in the boot. For the last two of those days the car was sitting under the noses of the cops and they did not unlock the boot.

Had they done so, police in Los Angeles, where Xue had gone after leaving his daughter, would have been looking for a murder suspect rather than a desertion case that could not register high on their scale of offending.

Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope has defended the police investigation in general terms as best he can. He says he is satisfied it has followed normal procedure and “best professional practice”.

But it cannot be normal to ignore a car belonging to the prime suspect parked outside the home of a person who had not come forward the day after her daughter’s picture had been published so widely.

It is a bit rich to plead the need for forensic care in opening the boot when the vehicle has been left exposed to “contamination” by the passing traffic of a news scene for two days.

Doubtless there are many criminal investigative procedures that cannot be explained to the public without compromising their efficacy, but that fact should not be used to cover simple, inexplicable oversights. Our police normally look better than this.

It is just a pity this slow-witted piece of work should occur on a case that much of the rest of the world is watching.

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Police defend response to calls over party

September 12, 2007

Emergency 111 calls about the disorder in Herne Bay that led to Augustine Borrell’s murder were not judged urgent enough to warrant a police car being sent.

More than 30 minutes after the first call, the Northern Communications call centre decided to notify police in Auckland city.

Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty yesterday gave details of the 111 calls, saying: “We don’t have a crystal ball to say when disorder is going to turn into a murder.”

She said three 111 calls were made to the call centre after the party was shut down and the teenagers began milling around on the street.

A call about “yelling on the street” was made at 11.41pm and another about “throwing bottles” at 11.55pm.

The third call, about fighting came in at 12.01pm and Ms Hegarty said by 12.12pm a call-taker at the centre, who had the caller on the line, decided the situation had “escalated” enough to warrant sending a vehicle.

It was at that point Auckland city police became aware of the disorder, and Ms Hegarty said it took only five minutes for a police car to arrive, which “is pretty darn good”.

Ms Hegarty said police could not rush out to every 111 call about “yelling in the street” and call-takers were trained to judge when situations required police attendance.

Police had been called to a lot of disorder in the city that night, including a group of 30 youths fighting at the Viaduct about 11.30pm.

The end-of-exams party was thrown by the teenage daughter of lawyer Jeffrey Morrison, a partner at Russell McVeagh, and his wife, Noeline, who were at the Rugby World Cup in France.

A 20-year-old, believed to be an elder daughter, was providing the adult supervision.

The Morrisons’ $2.6 million home with swimming pool and tennis court was empty yesterday, the driveway monitored by a security guard. Beer bottles were strewn across the outdoor area and on the astroturf.

Neighbours had differing views of the party. One, who did not want to be named, said it was a “party house” and the parents had to take some responsibility for leaving their girls at home. She had been so frightened from 10.30pm that she left her lights off so as not to draw attention to her house.

Another neighbour described the Morrisons as “social, but not over the top”. She had noticed the party, which was attended by more teenagers than usual, but was not out of control.

Family spokesman Mike Heron said the Morrisons were returning from France and would attend Augustine’s funeral.
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Police bugs put up for sale

Sep 7, 2007 6:13 PM

A Cromwell man who found police surveillance gear in two cars they returned to him has been arrested for theft of property.

Ralph Williams had put the devices up for auction on Trade Me but police had the ad taken off the the internet website.

Williams was being a little cheeky when he found the bugs in two cars given back to him by police and put them up for sale on the web. Police pulled the ad, apparently telling Trade Me that the seller did not own the devices.

ONE News reporter Tsehai Tiffin was there when the police team swooped and they confirmed he was under arrest for the theft of “some property of the New Zealand Police”.

Williams told ONE News that the items had to be the listening devices.

Police took away at least one of the cars that had been fitted with tracking devices. The car had been returned to him bugged he says by police investigating the arson of a vehicle of their own.

Someone torched a brand new police mufti car right in front of the Cromwell police station - a two month old Holden Commodore.

“I did nothing wrong,” Williams says. “The police car burning had nothing whatsoever to do with me…there’s no evidence to suggest it did.”

He says he put the ad on Trade Me to bring attention to what police were doing and because he says they didn’t immediately own up to the tracking devices.

He says they initially replied no to an email he sent asking if they had left anything behind and then later changed that to a maybe.

Williams had found a sim card in one of the devices that gave him the number of the local police.

Police would not comment because it is an operational matter but in a statement they say the equipment was used according to a court order.
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Police apologise over funeral procession crash

1 September 2007

Police have apologised to the family of a deceased Te Anau man whose funeral cortege turned into a three-car pileup after a police officer flagged down the hearse as it lead the procession of up to 100 cars to the Te Anau cemetery.

In a statement issued yesterday, Southland area commander Inspector Tony O’Neill says he and the officer involved in the incident on July 31 have apologised to the family for any distress caused to them.

A complaint about the incident, made to the Police Complaints Authority, has been withdrawn, the statement says.

Family member Grant Brown, of Myross Bush, said he was happy with the outcome and the explanation given by Mr O’Neill when he visited the family last week.

The family now just wanted to put the incident behind them, Mr Brown said.

The family was told the police officer had just finished pulling up another vehicle when she had noticed a dark stationwagon, with a queue of cars behind it, travelling towards her.

Believing it was holding up traffic, she pulled over the lead vehicle only to discover it was a hearse containing a coffin, Mr Brown said.

“She was quite upset about it.”

The family was told Te Anau police were usually informed if there was a funeral in the town but had been unaware of the funeral on this day, he said.

However, given Te Anau was a small place, he found it a bit unusual they did not know, Mr Brown said.

The complaint lodged with police had not

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Son of deceased still seeks police apology

Wednesday, 22 August 2007

The son of a deceased Te Anau man whose funeral cortege turned into a three-car pileup, allegedly caused when police flagged down the hearse, yesterday said he was still waiting for the policewoman responsible to say sorry.

The man said he had asked for an apology from the female constable who had pulled over the hearse carrying his father’s body to the Te Anau cemetery just fewer than three weeks ago.

He had not received one so far but he remained hopeful.

“It’s not hard to pick up the phone and apologise,” he said.

The man said he had been contacted by police who were conducting an internal investigation into the incident.

Police have also spoken with the funeral director involved.

The man said he believed the policewoman had been stood down.

Southland police boss Inspector Tony O’Neill declined to comment on details of the investigation.

Likewise he would not say whether or not an apology might be forthcoming.

However, he said the policewoman had not been stood down.

The investigation was still in progress and might be completed in about a week, Mr O’Neill said.

The investigation was launched after a Te Anau policewoman ordered a hearse leading a cortege of between 80 and 100 cars, many with their lights on, to pull over.

This allegedly caused nose-to-tail crashes involving three vehicles.

Two vehicles were extensively damaged and police had to give some mourners a lift back to Te Anau.

Earlier this month, family members expressed their anger with police and hoped the investigation would not be brushed under the carpet.
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End of the nightmare for wrongly jailed man

August 19, 2007

Bob Sutton in his Okawa Bay store, The Happy Angler. Photo / Michael Craig
For 10 torturous months, home for 57-year-old Bob Sutton was a gloomy prison cell not much bigger than the cluttered back room of his Rotorua dairy.

Inside his cell, the mild-mannered Okawa Bay shopkeeper would sit alone hunched over the tail end of his narrow cot, keeping a jailhouse diary, penning his thoughts.

“Even now it seems quite unbelievable. What can I say, it was a nightmare,” he says.

Sutton’s “nightmare” finally came to an end last week with confirmation of the Crown’s decision not to seek a retrial over allegations he raped and assaulted a woman known to him and her two friends.

In November 2005, Sutton, who has four adult children, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment after earlier being found guilty on 15 indictable charges - including two of rape, nine of assault and four relating to assault with a weapon.

A year later, following the presentation of new evidence, the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial, quashing the earlier convictions. It found that the main complainant in the case was “involved in gathering false evidence in support of the allegations prior to the trial”.

Police this week decided not to take a new case - Sutton is now a free man.

Back behind the counter yesterday of the Happy Angler dairy, Sutton remembered the phone call from his lawyer giving him the news.

“He said to me ‘you’re out of here’. The relief was enormous,” he says.

“I can still hear the door on my cell closing for that last time. It was a sound I’ll never forget.”

For three years Sutton had protested his innocence.

The allegations, which dated back to 1995, came to light in 2004. At the time Sutton was operating a hotel in the King Country town of Piopio. Aside from the allegations of rape, the Crown had alleged that on two separate occasions Sutton had threatened one of the three complainants in the case by pinning her to the ground and up against a wall. On both occasions, the Crown alleged, Sutton was armed with either a knife or an axe.

However, witnesses appearing on Sutton’s behalf described the main complainant as a “strong-willed” woman who was known to “spin out” and overreact to situations when she didn’t get her own way. The defence alleged the three complainants had banded together to “get Sutton”.

Yesterday, Sutton was reluctant to criticise the complainant, whose identity was suppressed throughout the trial.

But he recalled when the guilty verdicts finally came in: “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t understand how anyone could believe those allegations were true. All my life I’d been a law-abiding citizen and then suddenly I was going to jail.”

Sutton spent the next five weeks on bail awaiting sentencing, and confronting the fact he was “going away for a long time”.

“You just can’t imagine what that time was like, preparing for jail. The whole time was a blur.”

He recalls the sense of dread he felt as he was frogmarched through the doors of Waikeria Prison. He had no idea what to expect.

But he soon discovered the harsh reality of prison life. An inmate wanted a packet of biscuits he’d been given. Sutton told him to “piss off”. The inmate beat him to the ground.

“It wasn’t the sort of thing I was used to. I tried to get on with the other inmates, make the best of the situation, but it was tough.

“I’m a people person, but there, the best thing you can do is keep to yourself. The toughest thing was losing my freedom.

“I knew I was innocent so I always had faith. Every day I would wake up thinking maybe today’s the day. That kept me going.”

Sutton says he drew great strength during those dark days from friends and family who, he says, never doubted his innocence.

He says nothing can make up for the huge financial and personal toll of the past few years. He’d spent $100,000 defending the charges and had lost thousands while he’d been locked away. He was not sure whether he would now seek compensation.

The complainant could not be reached for comment last night.

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Mourners crash like ‘dominoes’ after cop stops hearse

August 08, 2007

Mourners’ vehicles crashed into each other “like dominoes” after a police officer pulled over the hearse leading the cortege near Te Anau.

Police have launched an internal investigation after the Te Anau policewoman ordered a hearse to pull over as it led a cortege of between 80 and 100 cars to the Te Anau cemetery last week, causing nose-to-tail crashes behind.

Three vehicles were damaged, two of them extensively, resulting in the policewoman having to ferry some mourners back to Te Anau.

There was speculation the incident was the funeral director’s second brush with Te Anau police, who pulled him up for speeding en route to the town, the Southland Times reported.

This has been denied by the funeral director.

A son of the dead man, who was in the car behind the hearse, was “bloody furious” with police.

“I thought it was absolutely disgusting,” he said.

“Here we are taking dad to the cemetery and we are all pulled over and there are accidents behind us. It was just like dominoes.”

He said he could not understand how the policewoman could not know it was a funeral procession, and he wanted her to pay for the damage to the cars.

Southland police boss Inspector Tony O’Neill yesterday declined to comment on the incident, saying it was under investigation after a complaint was laid with police.

The funeral director, who asked not to be identified, said he had been travelling about 70km/h on the open road leading the cortege.

The hearse’s lights were on, as were the lights of the 80 to 100 cars behind him.

The policewoman, parked on the opposite side of the road, had gestured at him to pull over, the funeral director said.

Three cars further back in the cortege crashed when it was brought to a halt.

Waipahi man Gerard Vallely, who was in the middle of the pile-up, estimated his speed at between 30km/h and 40km/h.

Mr Vallely said he managed to drive his car back to Te Anau but the occupants of a badly damaged Land Cruiser were taken back in the police car.

Mr O’Neill said it could be “some weeks” before the investigation was completed.
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Police quiz for recruits fails test

3 August 2007

The quality of police recruits has been under fire lately, but it may be the recruiters who need to swot up on their maths.

A online mock recruiting test has left potential recruits questioning the calibre of their examiners, after they correctly answered a maths question, only to be told they were wrong.

The question: “If a man weighing 80kg increased his weight by 20 per cent, what would his weight be now?”

Potential candidates who correctly clicked 96kg were told they were wrong. The recruitment test told them the correct answer was 100kg.

The mock test is intended to give people an idea of what the recruiting test entails.

One New Zealand man living in London said he took the test for a laugh. “And I found something very unfunny about it. Their test is embarrassingly wrong.”

Another wrote: “Bit hard to maintain the quality of the recruits if the recruiters can’t get it right themselves!”

Police recruitment marketing manager James Whittaker said the mistake came from a technical glitch and had been fixed.

He said the people who spotted the mistake were the sort of recruits police were looking for, and he urged them to think about applying for the force.

About 1500 people had taken the on-line practice test in the past two weeks, and two-thirds of them had asked for recruitment information.

Police human resources manager Wayne Annan came under fire this week amid accusations that he sanitised a report to justify the recruiting campaign and then threatened a senior recruit trainer.

Police Minister Annette King has ordered an independent report into the standard of police recruits. It is due in September.
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Will left bias brush over Police subservience to China?

March 28th, 2007

Any failure to humiliate Dr Cullen over the Police ejection of Parliamentary journalist Nick Wang should warn National that it will be very much harder for them (than Labour) to take and hold power.

PM Jenny Shipley’s officials were suspected of conveying instructions to our Police and diplomatic protection personnel from Chinese security men in 1999. Police moved law-abiding Tibet supporters from near the Chinese President’s hotel and route. The media ran the story for weeks.

Labour were able to make the issue run because the media were ripe. They shared a collective sense of mission - to test the PM’s credibility, and to see the government gone. The Tibet protest suppression had the right ingredients - kowtowing to a foreign power, suspected duplicity, and constitutional breaches (of the independence of the Police).

Dr Cullen has gifted identical factors to National. We’ll see if they can use them. So far the running seems to have been made entirely by the Gallery.

Immediately after the 1999 election Labour initiated a Select Committee inquiry, designed to destroy Jenny Shipley’s credibility.

I learnt much from sitting on that enquiry. once it was clear that Mrs Shipley was not implicated it became my first experience of Parliamentary bi-partisanship, as the committee grew increasingly appalled at the untrustworthiness of Police witnesses. No MP on that committee was unaffected. Most shattering was the simple stupidity at senior levels, in sticking to incredible denials in the face of overwhelming evidence, including video footage,

The committee had no desire to destroy public confidence in Police integrity. We noted our unhappiness with their evidence and focussed the report on protocols for preserving constitutional propriety. It appears from reports of the Wang affair that Police agreement on those might have been as unreliable as their evidence to the committee.

http://www.stephenfranks.co.nz/?p=109

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PM admits police ‘mistakes’

29 March 2007

The Government is distancing itself from moves by police to shield visiting Chinese officials from exposure to protest and free speech.

MPs yesterday called for police to apologise for their actions in expelling an accredited journalist from a photo opportunity in the Beehive.

The accusations follow an investigation started by parliamentary Speaker Margaret Wilson into the incident, which involved the Diplomatic Protection Squad (DPS) and police officers.

Prime Minister Helen Clark is understood to be disappointed with the police after officials briefed her yesterday on video footage taken of the incident.

A spokesman for her office said Clark conceded “mistakes have been made”.

Wilson told MPs yesterday she was seeking a meeting with Police Commissioner Howard Broad to agree on protocols to ensure such incidents did not happen again.

Green Party MP Keith Locke called for police to apologise to Capital Chinese News editor Nick Wang, who was expelled from a photo opportunity with Chinese Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan and Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen on Monday night.

In the exchange caught on video, police told Wang the Chinese delegation was uncomfortable with his presence and that it had been informed he was a member of the Falun Gong religious sect, which is outlawed in China.

Locke read out a list of incidents during Chinese visits in recent years in which police appeared to have been shielding the visitors from embarrassment.

New Zealand is negotiating a free-trade deal with China and has been accused of being too wary of offending Beijing.

United Future leader Peter Dunne backed the Greens.

“If the police took orders from Chinese officials to eject Mr Wang, then that’s disgraceful. If they took it upon themselves to withdraw Mr Wang’s accreditation and then eject him, then it’s even more disgraceful,” he said.

Wilson told Parliament she was responsible for allowing journalists to work freely in the complex, not the police, who on the video could be heard threatening to retract Wang’s accreditation.

DPS head Bruce Blaney said his officers acted only when they saw a security threat.

“We deal with numerous visitors from a variety of countries and we are aware of the sensitivities they do place on various people and organisations,” he said.

Police operational support national manager Superintendent Tony McLeod said Wang “became agitated, throwing his arms about, shouting and demanding entry to Dr Cullen’s office”.

When asked about the video footage, which contradicted his account and showed Wang remaining calm, he said the police were “absolutely not” acting at the direct request of Chinese officials.

Cullen and Clark had initially backed the police version.

However, an official from Clark’s office said yesterday it appeared the DPS had made the decision to eject Wang in consultation with the Chinese.

Cullen said he had to take police at their word and stressed he had not witnessed the expulsion.

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Roadblock was mistake: police

11 March 2007

Police admit they should not have used an Auckland woman’s car as a “roadblock” to stop a suspected criminal during a chase.

Auckland’s acting district commander Brett England said the incident last month, when a woman driving her car had been used to stop a fleeing suspect, was dealt with inappropriately.

Police initially refused to pay for the $7800 damage to Evgeniya Arel’s car before her story featured in the Sunday Star-Times last week.

England said police had since investigated and now accepted they were at fault. “We’ve accepted we made a mistake and that’s why we’re paying for (the car).”

Arel said she was “very pleased” and would probably use the money to buy a new car rather than fix her old one.

She had also had an apology from the man being chased after he saw her in the street. “I didn’t know what to say,” said Arel. “He was nice, really apologetic.”

The man is before the courts on several charges, including failing to stop.

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Police car smashes into traffic lights

February 11, 2007

Two Auckland police officers are nursing minor injuries this morning after smashing their patrol car on their way to a callout.

The officers were responding to a call for backup to fellow officers dealing with a fight.

However, on the way the driver hit a set of traffic lights on the corner of Lunn Avenue and the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway.

Inspector Matt Sillars says the police car has extensive damage and had to be towed away.

An investigation will be held into what caused the incident.

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Scolded police turn Piha over yet again

24.10.2004

Thirteen days after Iraena Asher went missing Piha was turned upside down yesterday by a chastised police force, searching for the part-time model who vanished into the night.

For some residents it was the sixth time officers had knocked on the door in almost two weeks.

But when police went searching this time it was with the condemnation of Iraena’s bereft family ringing in their ears.

A letter from the family in yesterday’s Weekend Herald was severely critical of the police.

Adding to possible tension is the family’s hope Iraena left Piha, which has been heavily searched, and the police belief she never did.

Detective Senior Sergeant John Sutton said a roadblock had been set up on Piha Rd - the only road out of the township - within an hour of the last sighting of Iraena.

“We have no evidence to believe she has left the area,” he said. “We know the family is hopeful she may have, but we have no evidence. The family have expressed that they are hopeful and we share their hopes. However, we have grave concerns.”

An eight-year-old girl was wandering the road with her skateboard yesterday, seeking out police officers. “I want to tell them I had a dream Iraena Asher was in a tent on a hill and I found her there. Then I woke up crying,” she said.

Everyone has a theory. At the time Iraena was last seen, the tide was at its lowest and a strong offshore wind was blowing. The outgoing Piha surf has a strong pull and Iraena had already returned from the beach earlier in the day, wet and covered in sand.

Like hundreds of other residents at Piha, Tom Cagwin, 71, has already gone through police questioning. Again, for the “third or fourth time”, an officer visited with more questions.

Mr Cagwin welcomed the officer in, as always, and co-operated as much as he was able. “Someone must know what happened to her … someone …” he said.

Henderson police Constable Dean Broomfield, one of 20 officers going door to door yesterday, said: “People are really concerned about the welfare of Iraena.”

Asher dispatcher slammed in report
19 January 2006

The Police Complaints Authority has found a dispatcher used undignified and unprofessional language when dealing with a call made by Iraena Asher.

Authority head Judge Ian Borrin today released his report into the handling of Miss Asher’s 111 call in October 2004.

Ms Asher was last seen in the early hours of October 11 at Piha, west of Auckland, after earlier phoning police for help which never arrived.

Her call to the police Northern Communications Centre led to the dispatch of a taxi to collect her. But the taxi went to the wrong address and the resulting outcry sparked a review of the handling of emergency calls.

Judge Borrin said he agreed with a police finding that the call was mishandled by the dispatcher and sergeant but not the call taker.

“As discussed (in the report) the remarks made about the event and the language used by the dispatcher were undignified and unprofessional.”

He said the incident showed that police needed to be careful to treat calls seriously even when the caller did not sound distressed.

He did not add to extensive recommendations already made but endorsed police commitments to improve communications centres and responses.

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She called 111 and was mocked

24 September 2006

While distressed model Iraena Asher was asking for help, a police dispatcher was calling her “a fucking stupid bitch”, transcripts reveal.

The 25-year-old Auckland University student and part-time model disappeared from Piha, West Auckland, nearly two years ago after a 111 emergency call botch up.

Iraena made calls for help on the night of October 10, 2004, after drinking with friends. She told police she had been pressured for sex, had possibly been drugged and felt in danger.

In response, police sent her a taxi. The taxi went to the wrong suburb and Iraena has not been seen since.

It prompted a major investigation into the 111 system, a Police Complaints Authority inquiry and an internal police investigation.

Police have battled to keep secret the details of Iraena’s three calls for help. Now her family is going to the Privacy Commissioner for help.

Last week, Chief Ombudsman John Belgrave forced the release of transcripts revealing the abusive language of the 111 dispatcher who handled her increasingly desperate calls.

The documents show the dispatcher referred to Iraena as a “fucking-stupid bitch out Piha”.

And when Iraena’s father Mike read the comments for the first time last week, his stomach heaved.

“I wanted to vomit or spew or something. I feel sad, in despair and just gutted - gutted again,” Mike Asher said.

Sitting in the living room of his tidy A-frame house, an emotional Mike said he and his wife Betty were struggling to get police to release all Iraena’s case files.

Earlier this year the report from the Police Complaints Authority investigation revealed police officers thought Iraena’s plea for help was “a bit of rubbish” and that she “wanted a free ride” home. PCA Judge Ian Borrin ruled the dispatcher had used “inappropriate and unprofessional” language and made “undignified and unprofessional” remarks about her to a police sergeant. He said Iraena would not have heard the comments. After an internal police inquiry, the dispatcher had counselling. But until last week the family hadn’t known the exact words used to describe her.

Police acting deputy commissioner Roger Carson described the dispatcher’s language as indefensible. It was “completely unacceptable and inappropriate”. Carson said police realised the new transcripts would cause fresh hurt to Iraena’s family which the police regretted very much.

Iraena’s parents want to take legal action against the police and are frustrated that large chunks of the newly-released files have been blacked out. They have complained to the ombudsman.

“We just want to know why. What are they hiding?” Mike Asher said.

Carson said decisions over what material was released was made by the ombudsman after submissions from the police legal team and the Asher family.

Deputy Ombudsman Leo Donnelly told the Sunday Star-Times “the police disciplinary file and the investigation files are under investigation and review by the chief ombudsman”. The Ashers have now been referred to the Privacy Commission.

“It’s been from the Police Complaints Authority to the ombudsmen and now to the Privacy Commission. I don’t understand why. It’s just more bad news,” Mike said.

He said his family had lost all faith in the police.

Iraena’s sisters Tamara, Angelique and Lainie have all moved abroad -Tamara is in the US and the others are in Australia. Mike said they had moved overseas because they didn’t feel safe in New Zealand.

But he and his wife are staying here to continue to fight for an acknowledgement police failed their daughter.

But he and his wife are staying here to continue to fight for an acknowledgement police failed their daughter.

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Police blasted as killing accused freed

Sheryl Brown

30.06.05

A mentally ill man has walked free from a manslaughter charge after a High Court judge delivered a withering verdict about the way police initially interviewed him.

Gafatasi Samuelu, aged 33, a homeless schizophrenic, was accused of killing bag woman Sheryl Brown, a former model, who was found lying dead by a toilet block in an alley by the Hopetoun Alpha carpark near Karangahape Rd in December 2002.

Samuelu, who made various incriminating statements and apparent admissions to the police, was committed for trial to the High Court at Auckland last year.

But following a successful challenge by defence counsel Peter Tomlinson and Sanjay Patel, Justice Marion Frater has dismissed the manslaughter charge after ruling the police interviews inadmissible.

While Samuelu waived his right to consult a lawyer, Justice Frater said, there was “no justification for interviewing the accused in the way he was without support or legal advice”.

The judge said police were aware of Samuelu’s mental issues before the first interview and any doubt would have been removed by the time of the second interview, on March 25, 2003.

“I therefore see it as grossly careless and even verging on the reckless when the officers proceeded to interview him on March 25 without going further to explain and facilitate his rights,” the judge said.

In doing so they were in breach of their own guidelines for dealing with suspects with disabilities.

The judge described the breach of Samuelu’s rights - his right to counsel and his right to be advised of the nature of the charge he faced - as so “fundamental, flagrant and serious” that excluding the video statements was the only option.

The judge said while the community was interested in the successful prosecution of serious crimes, it was particularly important for the mentally ill and those with limited understanding to be afforded their fundamental rights.

“The public has a sense of fair play. They do not want a conviction at any price,” the judge said.

Defence counsel Peter Tomlinson said Samuelu’s admissions on tape were utterly unreliable.

“I hope the police take on board the judge’s strong comments in regard to the w