Editorial: Police far too image conscious

THOSE who attended the talk given by Dr Jarrod Gilbert in the concert chamber at the War Memorial Centre as part of Wanganui's Literary Festival in September could not help but be impressed.

Here was an academic and entertainer; a man who could expound on rigorous research and be funny at the same time. And here was a seeker after truth, which can be an elusive concept at the best of times.

Dr Gilbert, criminologist and lecturer at the University of Canterbury, wrote a very good book about New Zealand gangs, spending time with them to get the real story. And now he is back in the news.

This week he revealed that the police enforced strict conditions on academics who wanted to study crime figures. They had to sign a contract and could be blacklisted if they failed to show police a draft of their research report; if they failed to work on "negative results" with police; and if they failed to work with police to "improve" the research "outcomes".

Police could ultimately "veto any findings from the release".

To me that reads like police seeking to avoid any independent, objective analysis of their work or of crime in New Zealand and, instead, using coercion to massage any such study to suit their own ends.

Police are adept at controlling information and have become increasingly image-conscious and seem determined not to be seen in a bad light, whether that be a true reflection or not.

Those who attended Dr Gilbert's talk in Wanganui in September may not be surprised by any of this - particularly if they recall the "Paul Holmes was a gang member" element.

Dr Gilbert produced police pronouncements of recent years that gangs were responsible for the vast majority of organised crime in New Zealand and for the bulk of the illegal drugs trade. That did not square with his experience of the gangs and so he meticulously unpicked the figures and concluded that gangs were responsible for only about 3 per cent of organised crime in New Zealand.

It depends how you define a gang member. The police would deem anyone with a family link with a gang member as also a gang member.

Paul Holmes' daughter Millie Elder was the girlfriend of Head Hunters member Connor Morris - hence the statistics had poor old Mr Holmes in there, too.