Editorial: Zero tolerance won't earn police respect

A rash of assaults on police officers has prompted several proposed solutions. From the Prime Minister came the idea of creating a category of offence for assaults on the police, or requiring judges to give weight to an officer's occupation when sentencing the attacker. From the Police Association's Greg O'Connor came an appeal for the courts to start convicting people for low-level offending against the police, including the hurling of insults. This, he said, was the way to address a culture of disrespect for the law, which led to assaults on officers.

Both responses have a surface allure, especially for those who demand quick-fixes for what are complex issues. But both are also severely flawed. John Key failed to acknowledge that assaults on the police already fall into a special category in several pieces of legislation, such as the 1961 Crimes Act, the 1981 Summary Offences Act and the 2002 Sentencing Act. The latter, for example, imposes a minimum imprisonment term of 17 years for the murder of a police officer - or a prison officer - acting in the course of his or her duty.

Much of this law, however, imposes penalties for assaulting a police officer that are similar to those of any assault. What the Prime Minister is suggesting, therefore, is that the punishment for attacking an officer should be higher under the present legislation. That creates a whole new issue. When formulating the laws, Parliament deliberately chose to recognise assaults on the police as a special case but not to make the penalties out of kilter with other assaults.

Presumably, the desirability of all citizens being treated equally under the law was uppermost in its thought. Parliament might also have thought the courts would, indeed, give weight to an officer's occupation in serious cases of assault. In most instances, that has proved a reasonable assumption. Judges have used their discretion and acknowledged the police enjoy a special status and esteem. Given this, the Prime Minister's suggestion bears the hallmark of creating new issues, and failing to offer an effective remedy.

Mr O'Connor's approach is even more problematic. He says a lack of guilty verdicts in the District Court had shown society and criminals that insulting the police is acceptable. It has also made the police reluctant to charge people for low-level offending using the legal provisions. "Cases show that it's something police are expected to put up with, but it shouldn't be," says Mr O'Connor. His response is essentially a zero-tolerance policy that would see people shouting obscenities at the police convicted for insulting behaviour.

This raises several problems. The first is that the courts are merely reflecting societal mores in their approach to such offending. Obscenities do not have the same impact as they did, say, 30 years ago. Nor are the police alone in feeling that respect for their authority has dwindled. The teaching profession, for example, suffers from the same ailment. When it applies a zero tolerance approach, it means large-scale suspensions and expulsions.

That is as misguided as a policy that would burden overloaded courts further with low-level offences against the police for little gain. Zero tolerance does not work because its inflexibility leaves no room to deal with an out-of-character indiscretion or suchlike. Its approach to minor misdeeds is also far more likely to create a climate of fear than engender respect.

The police are trained to deal with dangerous situations. They have always needed to be thick-skinned. Adopting a new sensitivity to insults is highly unlikely to reverse the growing number of assaults on officers. The problem is thornier and more complicated than that.