Questions over Whangarei's youth crime rate

By BRIDGET CARTER

Talk to Whangarei Mayor Craig Brown and he will say local people are proud of their police force.

"They have been getting on and doing a damn good job," he says.

It is a view to be expected in a city where the mayor is a former policeman and voters chose hardline former Police Minister John Banks for 15 years as their MP.

People in Whangarei are worried about youth crime.

There are campaigns to stop drunkenness and lawlessness by young people in the city centre, and senior officers such as CIB head Marty Ruth describe their patch as "a bloody zoo".

Police have responded by cracking down hard on suspected offenders.

Whangarei is part of the Northland police district, which has the best crime-solving rate in New Zealand - 55 per cent of all reported crime.

Northland police's figure of 8976 criminal charges laid last year was described as "stunning" by Police Commissioner Rob Robinson.

But some Whangarei lawyers believe these results have been achieved at a cost.

In the past year, officers have faced mounting numbers of allegations that they have used excessive force, threatened suspects and made illegal arrests.

Judges have criticised cases and thrown them out of court.

Whangarei police have been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in court costs and an inquiry is being held into how officers are policing the city's streets.

It all began with an assault case last October, when Judge John Hole found that the defendants, Amanda Drake, aged 19, and her boyfriend Rohin Smith, 17, had used reasonable force in reaction to an unwarranted assault by Whangarei Sergeant Clifford Metcalfe.

Lawyers started to point out that cases such as these were often coming up in the city's courtrooms.

For about a year, duty solicitors had noticed bruises on those turning up for legal help. The names of certain police officers kept coming up as being responsible.

Whangarei police area controller Paul Dimery denied there were any problems with the way his officers were doing their job, and rejected Judge Hole's finding.

So about seven lawyers formed the Whangarei Criminal Bar Association to monitor police behaviour. They said that if people wanted to lodge complaints against the police, they would file them free of charge.

A flood of complaints came in about police threats and excessive force.

More than 36 complaints about police behaviour went to the Police Complaints Authority, Judge Ian Borrin, between October and December. They related to cases dating back to 2000.

Judge Borrin says he was concerned by the number of complaints within a short time from one small area of the district, as well as "the pattern and the broad similarity of the complaints in content".

At police national headquarters in Wellington, Robinson appointed one of his most senior detectives to investigate.

Detective Superintendent Larry Reid of Wellington went to Whangarei in November to begin inquiries.

He was asked to look at excessive force and said in his interim report that there were "matters that warrant further inquiry".

So far one allegation against a Whangarei police officer in August last year has been proven in court.

Officer Michael de Waal, 36, was jailed for six months for grabbing the keys to the Whangarei police cells while he was off duty and seizing a prisoner by the throat.

Judge Thomas Everitt found that de Waal then forced the prisoner to kneel and apologise to another prisoner in a humiliating way.

More than 11 judges have criticised the Whangarei police in the past three years.

In seven of these cases, the judges attacked police methods of interviewing crime suspects.

They disallowed statements used as evidence because police used threats or did not tell suspects of their rights.

One of these cases occurred in August last year.

Judge Michael Lance, QC, said he was satisfied that threats or inducements were made that led to a Whangarei woman making untrue admissions.

The 24-year-old solo mother says she confessed to a crime she did not commit after police threatened to have her son taken away.

In a second case revealed by the Herald today, detectives apparently used the same tactics when interviewing a man about a bungled $8000 cheque fraud.

Jack Thompson told the court that Constable Darryl Curran threatened to put his 6-year-old daughter into Child, Youth and Family Services custody if he did not confess.

Curran denied the claim.

Thompson also claimed that a CIB officer, Detective Sergeant Warren Moetara, told him to own up or his partner would be charged too.

Judge John MacDonald dismissed the charges, saying it was "highly likely" threats were made.

Whangarei police have run into some of their worst problems in the Youth Court, where experienced lawyers have described their handling of some cases as appalling.

In December, a Youth Court judge dismissed five burglary charges after an officer drove a youth around the city to identify houses he had burgled.

He broke the rules of the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act in several ways, including not reading the youth his rights or immediately contacting his caregiver.

In February, the judge ordered police to pay $1000 in court costs.

Police chief Dimery described it as a one-off incident.

A week later, another youth was unlawfully arrested. The case ended last month when Judge Heather Simpson threw out an aggravated robbery charge and ordered police to pay $5000 in court costs.

Auckland Criminal Bar Association president Geoff Wells says that what was particularly appalling about that case was that the police prosecutor knew the case was flawed, but a senior officer gave the go-ahead for it to continue.

The Herald was previously told by the new acting Whangarei police area controller, Inspector Rex Knight, that he thought Paul Dimery personally approved the case.

But last week, Knight said he was not sure who let the case proceed.

Northland district commander Superintendent Viv Rickard said there was no connection between Dimery's extended leave - he has been away for weeks and police cannot say when or if he will be back - and the investigation.

Rickard says that sometimes police officers make mistakes.

"It is a bit like a sporting environment. You can train people as much as you like to not drop the ball, but unfortunately it doesn't matter how much training you give them, in pressure, at times, people will drop the ball."

Kim Cohen, a member of the Whangarei Criminal Bar Association, agrees that some departments of the Whangarei police are impeccable, but says the problems that keep coming up are major faults.

For example, breaches of the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act are wide and varied.

"I don't think it is a drop in the bucket, not when you look at what the judges are commenting on.

"They look at absolutely fundamental things like procedure when interviewing people."

Rickard said Whangarei officers were given training on the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act this year, and he did not know of any problems since.

Cohen wonders if the city's high crime-solving rate creates a belief and some pressure on officers that "the ends justify the means - that if you solve crime, it doesn't matter how you go about it".

Mayor Brown rejects any claims of problems with the city's force.

He says some people in Whangarei have a total disrespect for the law - a "hard core ... people of tender years that lack parental control".

Brown says the lawyers who formed the criminal bar association are "new and young". Concern over police behaviour did not appear to be widespread among city lawyers.

But another member of the Whangarei Criminal Bar Association, Roger Bowden, says every lawyer in the criminal court has concerns.

He said Whangarei police had a tendency to take short-cuts and get a confession.

"This business of 'If you don't admit to it, we're going to lock the wife up' is something you hear day in day out. It destroys the faith in the police."

* bridget_carter@nzherald.co.nz