44 REX WIDERSTROM HAS HIS SAY

From CYFSWatch

“I’ve had a peripheral experience with CYFS (or whatever today’s acronym is) - I was asked to advocate for a family member whose children were taken into foster care. Without burdening the blog with detail, I found CYFS to be drunk with their own power and absolutely unwilling to listen.

Holding public servants to account is vital. I’d certainly support one which exposes the actions of corrupt or incompetent police officers, for instance. In fact there is such a site, but it’s run by someone who doesn’t fact check or strive for balance. Therefore, sadly, it has zero credibility and few readers.

Camryn is absolutely right. The CYFSWatch effort will fail, not because they are wrong about CYFS but because they lack the self control needed to convince the average unbiased reader of the rightness of their case.

Unless they tone down the hyperbole, eliminate the personal attacks (names and work emails would seem to be fine, home addresses and non-departmental car registrations would not) and concentrate on the facts which would sway the undecided - and that’s certainly not whether a social worker has a weight problem - they’ll be consigned to the backwaters of the net, where frothing conspiracy theorists roam.

Posted by Rex Widerstrom | January 24, 2007 8:59 PM”

——————

To: Rex Widerstrom

Hi Rex, Could you please write me a report on the Bent Cops website.
www.bentcops.org

Cheers Jack.

—————–

Rex Widerstrom Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 1:23 PM

To: jack vanderlubbe

Hello Jack

I’m familiar with the site, in fact I referred to it in a recent comment on
Kiwiblog - I presume that’s why you’re writing to me?

But what exactly do you mean by “report”? An analysis of the content? A
critique of the arguments put forward? A summation of the events described
therein? Or something else?

And are you proposing to pay a fee for this work?

Regards

Rex Widerstrom

—————

Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 6:43 PM

Hello again Rex,

Well I didn’t think I’d get a reply to my email but now that you have replied
I’d like you to justify the below assertions please.

“it’s run by someone who doesn’t fact check or strive for balance.
Therefore, sadly, it has zero credibility and few readers.”

Would you say the same about Doctor David Small’s story
(http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/sisdav.htm) about his experiences at
the hands of the police? Would you say that he hasn’t checked his
facts or striven for balance, that his honest account is a load of
bollocks and that nobody reads it?

You’ll probably deny it but I’m 99% certain that you Rex were the
Smile City member weizguy, who used very similar language and
reasoning as used in the SYFSWATCH post, to rubbish me and my Bent
Cops site in the SC forum.

“weizguy
19/9/2005 11:18:50 AM
Well, well, well…

I ran into some very grumpy ACTivists on saturday night while out celebrating…

I guess the Lazarus act wasn’t enough for them…

I just have to say:

“GO THE TREND!”

I loved that line graph on Saturday night…

I guess we got what we voted for - we certainly live in interesting times.”

It’s a fact that you were on the ACT payroll prior to being employed
by the Labour Party aye Rex?

Your faithfully
Jack Van Der Lubbe.

—————-

Rex Widerstrom Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 7:13 PM

To: jack vanderlubbe
Hello Jack

The fact that you could imagine I, of all people, would begrudge someone
exposing their ill treatment at the hands of the NZ Police goes some way to
establishing your lack of fact checking. While only my most recent injustice
is easily located online (the other five false arrests pre-dating the
widespread use of the internet) that ought to be enough to suggest that I’d
hardly oppose the raison d’etre of a site like bentcops.org. Rather my
concern is that in its present form it’s not as effective as it could be.

If a site set out to expose the Police and I thought it had a chance of
success I’d back it to the hilt. In fact it was my newspaper commentary on
“bent” cops almost 20 years ago which launched what is proving to be a
lifelong vendetta now spanning two countries. Each time I am charged, tried
and walk free the feeling amongst police is that, as they are on record as
sayin to my business partner, “he’s got it coming”.

Similarly, I believe the actions of CYFS more often that not result in
negative outcomes for all concerned, though in that case I have had only one
personal experience to confirm my bias. However I heard many, many others
when in politics and indeed am working with an Australian group called “Dads
in Distress” to try to get some funding together for a doco on the situation
here in Australia.

But my point about CYFSWatch and Bentcops.org is that while I applaud your
motives and have no reason to doubt the accuracy of your own personal
accounts, the NZ public are sceptical and difficult to convince, thanks to a
carefully contrived diet of “news”, gameshows, “reality” television, rabid
right wing talkback and politicians who do their best to terrify people with
stories of rising crime so they can win votes with a simplistic “tough on
crims, more cops on the beat” platform.

Therefore to withstand the hail of criticism directed at a site like
bentcops.org (or CYFSWatch) it needs to be edited to an even higher standard
than is an online media outlet. I don’t underestimate the time, resources
and dedication that entails, but it’s the only way such sites will make the
impact they deserve.

So yes that means fact checking the anecdotal stuff people send in; editing
out extraneous and childish references to whether social workers are fat;
not indulging in endless tit-for-tat exchanges with the Rae88’s of this
world (would the DomPost, say, give her an credibility at all by publishing
her rantings?); and in the case of bentcops.org slightlty less emphasis on
your own story would help make it look less like a personal vendetta
(however justified that may be) and more like the invalubale expose it ought
to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish bentcops.org all the best. Not a day goes by I
don’t wish that the true nature of the NZ Police was exposed to the light of
day. But I truly don’t believe that, in its present form, bentcops.org will
achieve that objective.

As for the remainder of your email… I had never hard of “Smile City” till
your email. I am not “weizguy”. I was not in NZ in 2005 so could not have
run into “grumpy ACTivists” (see what I mean about fact checking?).

I don’t support any political party and have worked for ACT, NZ First,
Labour and, in Australia, Labor, the Liberals (particularly their most
vehement anti-union MP), and the union movement.

My work for ACT was a contract to produce a single strategy document,
entirely delaing with the then NZ First MPs, their positions on various
issues and their potential strengths and weaknesses.

I’m a political communications professional, Jack - meaning I’ll work for
anyone who pays me and give them the best advice I can without betraying
another client, because I believe that in a democracy everyone has a right
to be heard.

Normally the 30 minutes I’ve spent composing this response would be
billable, since at your request it contains advice, but as I truly do wish
you the best in exposing the NZ Police, it’s at no charge;-)

All the best

Rex Widerstrom

—————-

From: jack vanderlubbe

Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 7:32 PM

Thanks for that Rex,

“In June 2002 ECPAT reported that Rex Widerstrom of Wellington was
extradited to Perth to face seven charges of sexually abusing a 14
year old girl.In September 2002 the Director of Public Prosecutions
told the court the complainant had retracted all allegations through
her counsel as the Western Australian Police Service had refused to
accept such a statement from her.”

I googled that and a lot of other stuff as soon as I saw your post
rubbishing my story.
I checked you out good.

Doctor David Small’s story is done in the same manner as mine so if
it’s good enough for him it’ll do me. Feedback on my site gives me
heart and I got it off my chest so I’m happy, sort of.

Cheers Jack.

I might be back after I digest your email properly, I’m a tad slow you
know. Agonize for days probably.

———————

Thu, Feb 1, 2007 at 2:52 PM

Hi Rex, me again. Just a few things for you.

“Therefore to withstand the hail of criticism directed at a site like
bentcops.org (or CYFSWatch) it needs to be edited to an even higher standard
than is an online media outlet. I don’t underestimate the time, resources
and dedication that entails, but it’s the only way such sites will make the
impact they deserve.”

I don’t know if you saw this in Bent Cops, Feedback Rex.

..woah.

Some people on here need to give it a rest.
Take some time out.
Some here are purposefully making this an annoying, immature (on their
part, they know who they are with out me having to identify them)
debate to be involved in by making abusive remarks and attempting to
wind people up.
Pretty predictable diversionary tactics that have similarly been
employed by all the great liars and cowards throughout history.
To simplify the issues of this topic and this site in general and to
get back to what I perceive this site to be about one must admit that
bent cops/Jack’s sole purpose isn’t just to try and bag all police
employees the country over for in reality not all are baggable.
You donk, scud and co. know this so if your purpose is preserving the
immaculate prestige ideology of law and order then please go and start
your own site because that’s not what this one is about.
This site is about CORRUPT POLICE AND EXPOSING THEM if you didn’t notice.
You and your juvenile crew have a hard time it would seem admitting
that police of this sort exist in the first place.
Police and the law and order society set themselves these lofty ideals
or as individuals involve themselves out of a desire to promote them
yet a lot routinely fail/ purposely fail to live up to them so they
must be had up by someone because as Jack has illustrated the PCA is
about as good as pissing into a Norwester on the plains of Canterbury
in the height of summer.
There, thankfully, are police out there who take the role of a
policeman seriously and fulfil their responsibilities to the best of
their abilities and beyond.
Society is much indebted to these people as the things they have to
face are more often than not negative and things the greater society
would like controlled and dealt with by people other than themselves.
But from what I gather from this site generally is there is a lot of
small minded pettiness and ignorance on the part of both obviously
bored and incompetent human beings (Black, Cullum and possibly scud
and donk but they seem slightly more capable of independent
thought……slightly) and police alike.
When you have tuggers like Black and Cullum who are obviously such
dishevelled serial whingers running to and fro to the cops and the
local gossip mill it doesn’t take long to get a mountain from a mole
hill as Jack has so eloquently detailed.
Meanwhile while the police are attending to Cullum and Black’s inane
paranoid ramblings and petty oneupmanshit who knows what the police
may be better spent concentrating on?
People such as Black and Cullum should be ashamed.
I think this site has a genuine purpose and seems to be monitored by a
humorous (in spite of the experiences he’s had to endure), careful (in
so far as collecting evidence to present a truthful account) and
remarkably emotionally/mentally resourceful man (again in light of
what he has had to endure - a lot of people would lose the plot but
Jack has put a good deal of his no doubt frustrated energy into
attempting to restore some sort of logic to the chaos of the events
instead of resorting to ignorant violence).
The wider issue is the double standards that the police and the legal
system as a whole regularly traipse out when they realise they have
encountered someone who won’t back down to the bull shit notion that
the law is god or at least some close affiliate of hers.
What about the thousands of people routinely had by the police and
legal system day to day just because they lack the courage or
articulate abilities of Jack?
This site is just a drop in the bucket of how corrupt and self-serving
so many democracies are through their police and smaller societal
governing bodies the world over.
We should be thankful we can have websites like this freely available
in this country and behave like Jack and use the legal system to
strive for justice.
Or would it just be easier if our police and government could kidnap,
torture till guilty or kill if not guilty like China, South Africa and
South America?
Whom? | August 4th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Its quite clear that even if Jack has embellished to fill in gaps,
he’s been a consistent voice of dissent to the point of annoying or
all the other weak (in the face of what has been meted out to him by
inbreds and police alike) points of detraction the voices of
opposition here continue to attempt to introduce as counter arguments
you cannot deny that people like Britton are a m m mm mmm mental
menace and that the police have repeatedly failed to assist Jack after
different individual police made the issue personal and closed ranks
like a scared bunch of red neck dimwits.
Britton has no point in life other than to involve other people in his
misery and destruction so as to create something to temporarily
detract from the fact that his life is actually only self created and
perpetuated misery and destruction.
Pretty typical antisocial, loser, sociopathic bull shit which in true
antisocial, loser, sociopath tradition make it someone else’s problem
as well.
The cops are just jocks who have become obsessed with coming out with
their egos intact (a common problem with ‘I am the law’ ‘law
enforcers’) which thus negates ever being able to go back on decisions
and reinstate justice.
BUT DO YOU KNOW WHO ARE BELOW EVEN THESE WEAK; SUB HUMANS WHO REFUSE
TO USE THEIR MIND AND MORALS?
All the pro corruption supporters who profess some objective
stance/intent i.e. zebuqueen, scud, donk etc… and then the rest of the
former/current cop/I’m married to a/distantly related to someone who
knows someone who knows a cop, knee jerk, tosser, dyslexia suffering,
addle brained, half wits ie zebuqueen,scud,donk who come here and go -
‘Hey, someone’s hassling the cops - oh look he’s Dutch oh those
liberal bastards fuck he must be a pinko commy queer non DB drinking
wannabe intellectual fucking probably doesn’t even play rugby fuckin’
fucker’ no brainer winners who are all denying the basic fact that
there is a continual evasion of duty here on the part of the cops.
The fact that none of these pro corruption supporters for a second can
even share any empathy with Jack and restrain themselves to admit that
perhaps just possibly maybe there’s been a slight miscarriage of
justice here on more than one time and level is absolutely disgusting.
Most of the attackers of Jack here and their behaviour is shameful and
hateful and telling of the fact that these people have acute issues of
their own that need addressing.
It is this kind of weak mindedness in making human rights decisions
that make people like Jacks attackers perfect candidates for
turncoats, informers and general brown nosers to the occupying force
should a Nazi like occupation situation ever arise here.
This kind of mentality of not pursuing what’s clearly right due to
having to go back on ones word appears to be extremely common in the
practice of the NZ government, police and other petty beauracracies
such as CYPS, WINZ and Study Link - the last three all absolutely
pathetically mismanaged organizations.
And don’t get me started on other ‘democracies’ around the world.
TO HIDE BEHIND loop holes, technicalities, formalities, red tape,
legislation, correct procedure, PETTY BEAURACRACY etc..IN FEAR OF WHAT
WAS A CLEAR CUT ISSUE EVERY TIME that could have been resolved from
the get go by following through with objective, duty bound decisive
action instead of letting the issues to become personal, ego oriented,
ignorance beset and bent to work place peer pressure and thus becoming
completely blown out of proportion and ballsed up IS ABSOLUTELY
UNBELIEVABLY INCOMPETANT.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE LIKE JACK WHO TAKE IT TO THE SYSTEM AND
UTILIZE ALL FORMAL CHANNELS CORRECTLY SHOW THE SYSTEM UP FOR WHAT IT
IS - A COMPLETE DOG EAT DOG CIRCUS OF MACHO ONE UP MAN SHIP & EGO
MASTURBATION.
Whom? | August 6th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
—————————————-
“even if Jack has embellished to fill in gaps”
Absolutely no embellishment on my part Whom?, in fact, for brevities
sake, I left a heap of stuff out.
When scud and co read Whom’s? first post I’ll bet they blurted out ,
‘Who the fuck are these Cullum and Black jokers he’s going on about?’

“you cannot deny that people like Britton are a m m mm mmm mental
menace and that the police have repeatedly failed to assist Jack after
different individual police made the issue personal and closed ranks
like a scared bunch of red neck dimwits.”

That’s the crux of the matter right there, exactly right except that
the cops also used said mongrels to further inflame already dangerous
situations. An example being Senior Sergeant Neville Haggarts acting
as Agent Provocateur to “test my reaction”.
Jack | August 7th, 2006
—————————————-
Yeah I was more using the embellishing thing to point out one of the
various weak, un true things your detractors on here have tried
unsuccessfully to use against you.
I don’t think you embellished anywhere any time.
Haggart acting in an absolutely un professional & provoking manner -
exactly I didn’t even really get into specifics about the sordid
relationship that the local swine had with the local psych case thug.
I mean this whole thing - issue after issue, where do you start?
I tried to be admittedly general in attacking the original problem and
then the un empathetic attitudes of your detractors on here which I
feel are just as shameful as the original problems with the
police/local red necks as they indirectly condone it by not
acknowledging there’s a gross miscarriage of justice.
You just come away with the impression that they all (cops, Britton
etc…) sit around at Britton’s at night sharing a crate and a cone
trying to utilise their depleted grey matter to come up with some
scenario in which you will crack.
Its sick, its childish, its rural policing for you.
Knowing someone through the final bastions of ‘good bloke’ territory
i.e. the pub or rugby team or stock sales yards and supporting them on
those grounds is more important than aiding someone who comes to you
with irrefutable evidence that so called ‘good bloke’ is in fact a
degenerate potential psychopath seems to be the case here.
Pretty typical good ole boys club thing going on here.
Someone should round them all up and assimilate them into the staff of
some American deep south local ’sheerifs’ where they really could live
out all their sick, violent and depraved fantasies without restraint.
Whom? | August 7th, 2006

——————-

“not indulging in endless tit-for-tat exchanges with the Rae88’s of this
world (would the DomPost, say, give her an credibility at all by publishing
her rantings?);”

You reckon I should fact check. I’ve done plenty. In most of the
incidents described in the first 27 pages of my site I’ve included
Police documents I obtained via the OIA. From page 29 through to page
34 I’ve relied on newspaper stories and in pages 35 and 38 I made
enquiries with the Police and the Ombudsman. When I did fact check in
the Colin MacLean (Rae88) matter I was denied the lurid details by the
Ombudsman. My enquiries to him did however confirm that the cops did
pay MacLean out and the cops don’t pay out for no good reason. IE they
screwed him over good and had to spend untold taxpayer dollars to buy
his silence.

“Don’t get me wrong, I wish bentcops.org all the best. Not a day goes by I
don’t wish that the true nature of the NZ Police was exposed to the light of
day. But I truly don’t believe that, in its present form, bentcops.org will
achieve that objective.”

Why don’t you do it then? You can knock up a 706 word email in no time
at all so an expose` about the true nature of the NZ police should be
a doddle. I’ve done my bit to the best of my dumbarse IQ, uneducated
abilities. If you’re so hot on the cops and so quick to deride other
people’s genuine attempts to set out the true facts about Mr Plod and
CYFS lets see you do better.

Just one more thing, how do you know how many readers my site gets?

Cheers Jack.

——————–

Jack

I’m not the enemy. I agree with you 100% about the proliferation of bent
cops in NZ (see my recent Kiwiblog comments on David’s posts about police
inaction on assault complaints, parole etc if you think I’m merely saying
this to win favour).

Yes, I’ve read some of the comments you copied into your email from those
who support you. Not all of them though, frankly, because their standard of
debate and their endless, rambling style are about as off-putting to the
average reader as is the utter nonsense babbled by those who oppose you.

Generally, people who find the need to comment in ALL CAPITALS and to
compose tortuous prose such as “oh look he’s Dutch oh those liberal bastards
fuck he must be a pinko commy queer non DB drinking wannabe intellectual
fucking probably doesn’t even play rugby fuckin’ fucker’ no brainer winners”
may well have something important to say, but no one in their right mind is
going to take the time to read it. The sentence from which I lifted that
quote rambles for 113 words before the writer feels the need for
punctuation.

It’s just not readable, and - sadly, because what you’re trying to do
deserves to be read and understood by every single citizen - very few people
are reading it. Don’t be fooled by hits on your website, if you monitor
them. The same handful of pro and anti-police debaters visiting over and
over again make the figures much higher than they appear,as they do with any
blog.

I base my perception of the sites readership on the fact that it has no
incoming links: http://www.google.co.nz/search?as_lq=www.bentcops.org
meaning no one has valued its content highly enough to want to link to it on
their own site. And that it’s Alexa traffic rating is 0 (i.e. too low to be
measured, c.f. Kiwiblog’s, at 55,043 or even Tumeke’s, which is 4,077,068 -
not bad from the billions of sites on the web)
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=bentcops.org&url=bentcop
s.org

My apologies - I should have made clear in my earlier comments that I wasn’t
being critical of the fact checking in the cases you’ve reported as part of
the content you’ve personally created (though I feel it could be presented
in a slightly more organised way in some cases - for instance a timeline for
the more complex cases). But some of the stuff that’s submitted by others
and alleged in comments detracts from the rock solid work you’ve done in
backing up your own case because it’s unsubstantiated.

That’s what I meant when I said that if the site is to achieve it’s broader
objective, of exposing corruption in cases other than your own, a huge
amount of work needs to go into it. You need a team of competent people
behind you Jack - but having said that I acknowledge how hard that is to
achieve.

At the very least, you need to implement a much stricter comments policy,
reserving the right to edit for brevity and sense. That needs to be even
handed, and I’m sure that those who oppose your views will begin screaming
that any editing will be biased. But if you’re genuinely fair and let them
have their say, the sheer number of opposing posts which get through the
editing process will make liars of them. And people who don’t want to spend
an afternoon parsing 113 word sentences might start visiting the site.

> If you’re so hot on the cops and so quick to deride other
> people’s genuine attempts to set out the true facts about
> Mr Plod and CYFS lets see you do better.

I’m sorry you see my comments - which were intended to be helpful - as
deriding your work. I’d deride some of the commenters on the site,
certainly. But you deserve accolades for what you’ve set out to do.

I’ll tell my own story at some point in the future - either when I write the
book which I’ve been being pestered for since about 1999 but don’t have time
to do, or when the cops next charge me with some nonsensical offence -
whichever happens soonest.

I really do wish you all the best.

Kind regards

Rex Widerstrom