Editorial: Police code of silence still sick

Sick culture is a strong term. When it was applied to police this year the Commissioner of Police engaged a retired High Court judge, Sir David Tompkins, QC, to look into the accusation by a Manukau District Court judge, Bruce Davidson. The district court had been dealing with assault charges against South Auckland officer Senior Sergeant Anthony Solomona and heard, incidentally to the charge, that he possessed a photograph of a suspect bearing a degrading sign around his neck. This was described by a police witness as "a joke of a kind someone outside police culture would not understand", prompting Judge Davidson to remark, "In my view the culture is as sick as the joke."

Now the Tompkins inquiry has produced a report which concludes no such "culture" existed. The inquiry has found the practice of taking "inappropriate" photographs of suspects and offenders was limited to relatively few officers, all connected to an "emergency response group" that had been disbanded by the time assault charges against Senior Sergeant Solomona came to court.

But the inquiry has uncovered incidents of gratuitous violence by police officers making arrests. These are as serious as any demeaning sign hung around a prisoner's neck and photographed for the amusement of the sick. Small acts of needless violence do nothing but demean the staff involved and reduce respect for the force as a whole. Sir David is satisfied that the violence does not amount to a "culture" either but he notes that most, if not all, the incidents the inquiry has brought to light were not reported by fellow officers for fear of breaking the "blue code of silence".

This code plainly is a culture and is not confined to any police district. The phrase seems to have international use. The very people sworn to bring others to justice observe a code that they do not "rat" on their own. Their reluctance seems to arise in part from the belief that complaints against fellow officers will not be well received by those up the chain of command, who also observe the code.

This is exactly the code that enables an officer such as Senior Sergeant Solomona to amuse himself with impunity. The Tompkins inquiry makes too little of the fact that it was not the district court judge who applied the term "culture". It was the term used by a police witness who tried to explain the humour. He was describing a culture that finds cruel humour in actions done under the code of silence that would not be understood or appreciated by people outside the police. That is the culture that concerned Judge Davidson and it has been dismissed rather too narrowly by Sir David.

The inquiry has concentrated on violence and photography, even scanning databases for pictures comparable with that of the 16-year-old with the sign around his neck bearing the words, "I belong to Senior Sergeant Solomona". It has found some, but none were the subject of formal complaints. On the issue of violence, it has documented the well-known social problems of Counties Manukau and notes its police are comparatively young, with the country's lowest average length of service. The rate of serious assaults on police is higher than in other Auckland districts.

But the concern is not that officers have been guilty of the occasional excess when arresting people with a tendency to violence, or that one or two had a strange taste in Polaroids. The problem is a code that could shield these things. The Tompkins inquiry considers the shielded conduct to be not so widespread as to be a culture, but the distinction is semantic. Sick is a fair description of it.