Police candid camera work fails to raise protest smile

By Peter Calder

Threaded through the thick blue line that ringed the rich and powerful in Auckland over the past week, they were hard to miss.

They worked in pairs. One held the other's belt, and as they moved they were sometimes comically reminiscent of a two-person pantomime horse.

Clad for ease of movement in combat-style uniforms, they made no attempt to disguise their function. This was making movies that, we are told, virtually no one will see.

They were officers of what police call the Mips - major incident photography section - and they were compiling a detailed video record of anti-Apec protests or of demonstrations drawing attention to the plight of the East Timorese.

Certainly their work did not go unchallenged. More than once I saw otherwise restrained protesters staring down the barrel of a shoulder-mounted camera and demanding loudly to know why they were being filmed.

It was a futile gesture - the cameras kept rolling and the camera operators, sure of their own security, didn't seem to flinch - but there was a defiant symbolism about the way someone who resented being filmed would do an impromptu piece to camera.

Police can't say how many hours of footage were shot. Detective Senior Sergeant Allan Boreham will only say that footage was taken "in any area where the response police officers were deployed."

And he seems genuinely bemused that anyone should have taken exception to the practice, which, he says, has been routine at least since the mid-80s.

For the record, "almost all" of the tape will be destroyed, though police will wait a few weeks to see whether complaints are laid about their conduct. Detective Senior Sergeant Boreham says one of the main uses of the footage is enabling police to establish whether there is any truth in allegations of misconduct.

But he also says the tapes are potential evidence if arrests do take place, and some sequences will be kept for training.

The protesters are sceptical. Catherine Delahunty, a spokeswoman for the Auckland Coalition Against Apec, found the filming sinister.

"You could see them choosing people. They filmed me quite a bit and followed people who covered their faces.

"It was like they were trying to keep a record of anyone strong enough to stand up.

"We felt it was intrusive," she says. "The purpose was to identify us and it's unnecessary in a democracy."

Detective Senior Sergeant Boreham says the filming is all about having an impartial record.

"We use the cameras for the same reason we film at crime scenes. It's very commonplace and I don't see it as anything other than transparent."

That sounds comforting. But it's the agent, not the action, that needs scrutiny to assess whether something is being done impartially.

Says Catherine Delahunty: "That is the importance of media and independent observers. The police are not independent. They have a specific role, to control the people protesting, and they were playing a very active role in protecting the interests of one group at Apec."

She accepts that the general relationship between the police and protest groups at the summit was not too prickly, but says it's easy for police to be nice when they so outnumber protesters and have the Army standing in the wings.

"It's an improvement on the Chogm experience. My impression was they wanted to get through with minimum arrests and show they were in control.

"Certainly a lot worse has happened on the streets of Auckland."