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@No-Quarter Yeah I completely agree that there's no way the judge thought "it'll make it awkward down the yacht club if I throw this guy in the slammer, better let him off lightly"
But having an expensive lawyer who can argue every legal point and try to bully the prosecution into downgrading charges would almost certainly have an impact. How he only got convicted of common assault and not some sort of injuring with intent charge is beyond me.
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@MN5 said in NZ justice system 2.0:
Yeah I read that bolded bit the other day and it made my blood fucken boil. A few of my ex colleagues went all the way and did the "sworn" thing ( ie became cops ). A couple are attractive blonds and I can easily picture them being the targets of all sorts of abuse and also worry that could easily happen to them after all a 50kg female isn't generally gonna fare to well against some pissed up aggressive bloke on Courtney Place.
My wife is about 50kg and worked frontline for a few years and she (thankfully) never had too many problems. Female cops are normally assaulted by other females because most criminals, except the worst or most desperate, still have a little bit of honour that extends to not bashing female cops. Female cops were also good at talking things down and de-escalating situations. I used to end up in way more brawls when I worked with other guys.
Speaking of the honour system, a long story, but I was working frontline in about 2009 and me and a female partner got called to a disorder/trespass job in Panmure. It came in as 2 guys arguing with the bouncers of a pub there because they weren't allowed in. It wasn't the crime of the century and we were in the McDonald's drive thru when it came in because we hadn't eaten all night. So as we went to it I was hurriedly trying to finish a big Mac combo.
When we arrived, it turned out one of the guys had an arrest warrant so he bolted down behind the shops, which are pitch black. I had left my torch in the car and was full of Mcdonalds so i gave up the chase after a few hundred metres and wandered back to see if my partner was okay with the other guy, figuring we'd get a dog to track the fulla I'd lost. As I rounded the corner, I saw the second offender shove/hit my partner and take off. It wasn't a bad assault but she was a bit shocked. I took off after him, thankfully he was kinda fat, and I was kinda gassed plus full of McDonald's so we had a slow motion footchase down Queens Road in Panmure. My partner had called for backup, saying she has been assaulted so suddenly there were a couple of nearby sirens audible which made the guy run down a dead end alleyway to try to get off the main road.
I got in the alleyway and yelled at him to get on the ground and he was under arrest for assaulting police. Just as I slowed to a walk and the offender put his hands up,this big old white guy who had seen the assault on my partner from the comfort of the pub came tearing past me and punched the offender square in the jaw with one of the cleanest punches I've seen landed and screamed "don't ever hit a woman cop" then proceeded to try to go to town on this guy on the ground. I then had to pull him off, and unluckily for him, one of he biggest guys on our squad turned up, and thinking the big white guy was the main offender spear tackled him and put him in cuffs for his troubles.
Hilariously, the first offender I lost was hiding behind a rubbish bin about 6 feet away in the same alley, looking petrified about what had just happened to his mate, came out and lay on the ground without being asked.
I think we ended up having to warn the big white guy for assault, just to cover our asses in court. Bizarrely enough, he had a sizeable criminal history for all sorts of things, but was staunchly pro police and anti violence against women so wasn't gonna let it slide.
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@MN5 said in NZ justice system 2.0:
@aucklandwarlord said in NZ justice system 2.0:
I think the while "a conviction would stop me from pursuing (insert chosen career path here)" thing is a little bit stupid when it comes to serious crime.
Fair play when it's something like disorderly behaviour or something minor and dumb. But when you punch a female cop unconscious and then punch her three more times in the head on the ground while shes unconscious, bad luck. That's a serious crime, and had it been a cop convicted of doing it to him the cop would definitely be going straight to jail.
Just because you have doors open to you that not everyone else does, shouldn't give you a get out of jail free card when it comes to serious offending. I was equally disgusted when George Moala got discharged without conviction for slashing that guys neck with a broken bottle too. With great privilege (such as lucrative career options) Should come great responsibility. The fact his family blamed it on him living away from home at uni is an insult to every other person who has done the same thing and not bashed females after too many beers. That their statement referred to it as a "bad decision" is also an insult. A bad decision would be the first punch, not the three subsequent punches to an unconscious female just doing her job.
While I agree we should look to rehabilitate offenders, there also has to be a punitive element to the justice system. I've seen poor brown kids go to jail for far less than what this clown did. Unfortunately for them their parents didn't have the money to buy a big-shot lawyer to argue every single legal point of the case
Well not only the career side of things but god forbid something get in the way of him doing his yachting, if anything screams JAFA and makes the rest of the country look on in scorn it's that.......( apologies to yourself, JK, Virg and any other Auckland ferners of course but I'm sure you get what I mean )
I knew Moala had assaulted someone some time back but attacking them with a bottle is next level shit, how the fuck did he get off that ? ( obviously another "he might be an AB one day, a conviction would hinder that" case ) As you say it's one thing to push and shove someone in a pub, I'm sure we've all done that countless times but to go several steps further indicates something isn't right.
There was a girl in about 2010 (i also think Tavita Li, the rugby player used the same excuse) who successfully got discharged without conviction on a drink driving charge because her lawyer argued that a drink driving conviction would completely scuttle her chances of a career in the Police. The police were furious and just turned her down because she wasn't of good character or some other obscure reason
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@aucklandwarlord you have the best stories, never leave.
Can we get a regular segment? Aucklandwarlord's story of the week.
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@aucklandwarlord said in NZ justice system 2.0:
@MN5 said in NZ justice system 2.0:
Yeah I read that bolded bit the other day and it made my blood fucken boil. A few of my ex colleagues went all the way and did the "sworn" thing ( ie became cops ). A couple are attractive blonds and I can easily picture them being the targets of all sorts of abuse and also worry that could easily happen to them after all a 50kg female isn't generally gonna fare to well against some pissed up aggressive bloke on Courtney Place.
My wife is about 50kg and worked frontline for a few years and she (thankfully) never had too many problems. Female cops are normally assaulted by other females because most criminals, except the worst or most desperate, still have a little bit of honour that extends to not bashing female cops. Female cops were also good at talking things down and de-escalating situations. I used to end up in way more brawls when I worked with other guys.
Speaking of the honour system, a long story, but I was working frontline in about 2009 and me and a female partner got called to a disorder/trespass job in Panmure. It came in as 2 guys arguing with the bouncers of a pub there because they weren't allowed in. It wasn't the crime of the century and we were in the McDonald's drive thru when it came in because we hadn't eaten all night. So as we went to it I was hurriedly trying to finish a big Mac combo.
When we arrived, it turned out one of the guys had an arrest warrant so he bolted down behind the shops, which are pitch black. I had left my torch in the car and was full of Mcdonalds so i gave up the chase after a few hundred metres and wandered back to see if my partner was okay with the other guy, figuring we'd get a dog to track the fulla I'd lost. As I rounded the corner, I saw the second offender shove/hit my partner and take off. It wasn't a bad assault but she was a bit shocked. I took off after him, thankfully he was kinda fat, and I was kinda gassed plus full of McDonald's so we had a slow motion footchase down Queens Road in Panmure. My partner had called for backup, saying she has been assaulted so suddenly there were a couple of nearby sirens audible which made the guy run down a dead end alleyway to try to get off the main road.
I got in the alleyway and yelled at him to get on the ground and he was under arrest for assaulting police. Just as I slowed to a walk and the offender put his hands up,this big old white guy who had seen the assault on my partner from the comfort of the pub came tearing past me and punched the offender square in the jaw with one of the cleanest punches I've seen landed and screamed "don't ever hit a woman cop" then proceeded to try to go to town on this guy on the ground. I then had to pull him off, and unluckily for him, one of he biggest guys on our squad turned up, and thinking the big white guy was the main offender spear tackled him and put him in cuffs for his troubles.
Hilariously, the first offender I lost was hiding behind a rubbish bin about 6 feet away in the same alley, looking petrified about what had just happened to his mate, came out and lay on the ground without being asked.
I think we ended up having to warn the big white guy for assault, just to cover our asses in court. Bizarrely enough, he had a sizeable criminal history for all sorts of things, but was staunchly pro police and anti violence against women so wasn't gonna let it slide.
Awesome yarn dude !
You're obviously right about the "code of conduct" thing regarding assault on female cops but I'd argue a lot of that is being lost as each generation passes. I remember working directly alongside a Superintendant who'd been in the job for over 40 years and said he would hate to be a beat cop now. Back in "his" day a fight was over the moment someone went down, nowadays it's everyone kicking the guy on the ground while someone else films it.
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@mariner4life said in NZ justice system 2.0:
@aucklandwarlord you have the best stories, never leave.
Can we get a regular segment? Aucklandwarlord's story of the week.
He has a way with words, I was picturing the whole incident as I was reading it.
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@aucklandwarlord
Ha awesome read! Gees you must have an absolute treasure trove of stories to tell. Downside with working in IT is your work anecdotes don't hold a whole lot of attention..especially with the fairer sex. -
@MN5 said in NZ justice system 2.0:
@aucklandwarlord said in NZ justice system 2.0:
@MN5 said in NZ justice system 2.0:
Yeah I read that bolded bit the other day and it made my blood fucken boil. A few of my ex colleagues went all the way and did the "sworn" thing ( ie became cops ). A couple are attractive blonds and I can easily picture them being the targets of all sorts of abuse and also worry that could easily happen to them after all a 50kg female isn't generally gonna fare to well against some pissed up aggressive bloke on Courtney Place.
My wife is about 50kg and worked frontline for a few years and she (thankfully) never had too many problems. Female cops are normally assaulted by other females because most criminals, except the worst or most desperate, still have a little bit of honour that extends to not bashing female cops. Female cops were also good at talking things down and de-escalating situations. I used to end up in way more brawls when I worked with other guys.
Speaking of the honour system, a long story, but I was working frontline in about 2009 and me and a female partner got called to a disorder/trespass job in Panmure. It came in as 2 guys arguing with the bouncers of a pub there because they weren't allowed in. It wasn't the crime of the century and we were in the McDonald's drive thru when it came in because we hadn't eaten all night. So as we went to it I was hurriedly trying to finish a big Mac combo.
When we arrived, it turned out one of the guys had an arrest warrant so he bolted down behind the shops, which are pitch black. I had left my torch in the car and was full of Mcdonalds so i gave up the chase after a few hundred metres and wandered back to see if my partner was okay with the other guy, figuring we'd get a dog to track the fulla I'd lost. As I rounded the corner, I saw the second offender shove/hit my partner and take off. It wasn't a bad assault but she was a bit shocked. I took off after him, thankfully he was kinda fat, and I was kinda gassed plus full of McDonald's so we had a slow motion footchase down Queens Road in Panmure. My partner had called for backup, saying she has been assaulted so suddenly there were a couple of nearby sirens audible which made the guy run down a dead end alleyway to try to get off the main road.
I got in the alleyway and yelled at him to get on the ground and he was under arrest for assaulting police. Just as I slowed to a walk and the offender put his hands up,this big old white guy who had seen the assault on my partner from the comfort of the pub came tearing past me and punched the offender square in the jaw with one of the cleanest punches I've seen landed and screamed "don't ever hit a woman cop" then proceeded to try to go to town on this guy on the ground. I then had to pull him off, and unluckily for him, one of he biggest guys on our squad turned up, and thinking the big white guy was the main offender spear tackled him and put him in cuffs for his troubles.
Hilariously, the first offender I lost was hiding behind a rubbish bin about 6 feet away in the same alley, looking petrified about what had just happened to his mate, came out and lay on the ground without being asked.
I think we ended up having to warn the big white guy for assault, just to cover our asses in court. Bizarrely enough, he had a sizeable criminal history for all sorts of things, but was staunchly pro police and anti violence against women so wasn't gonna let it slide.
Awesome yarn dude !
You're obviously right about the "code of conduct" thing regarding assault on female cops but I'd argue a lot of that is being lost as each generation passes. I remember working directly alongside a Superintendant who'd been in the job for over 40 years and said he would hate to be a beat cop now. Back in "his" day a fight was over the moment someone went down, nowadays it's everyone kicking the guy on the ground while someone else films it.
Yup, it's the same with the true old school crims. They lament how the world and the criminal underworld has turned out as well. The guys who would happily rob a bank or burgle a business but wouldn't touch residential addresses because that was ripping off a person not a corporation. Those guys were great to deal with as a Detective. They would never tell you anything on record but they were respectful and awesome to sit with and talk about their stories and lives. They were the sorts who would happily beat the shit out of a guy dealing drugs to kids but would never ever touch the cop who turned up to arrest them. To be fair, their stories of what used to happen in the police cells in the 70s and 80s to guys who beat up cops probably went some way towards explaining that..
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Interesting read, but in those graphics they should remove repeat offenders or show the first time offenders separately.
I recall that one they commented on in Northland, and it was rough and think he ended up being wrong person wrong time with the judge wanting to send a message as it had been the 2nd or 3rd public brawl in a short space in that town involving gangs.
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Stole the car, drunk and driving at 152km through a red light in a city to kill someone.
Total loser!!!
Whatever is the maximum this fuckwit should get it.
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Be interested in others thoughts on this, in Wellington the cops have become pretty OTT with their crackdown on drinking - the countdown car park, the sevens, the local race day etc etc. Anyway I think this is a pretty strange approach and it looks like they are trying to make out the licensing laws were partly responsible for this guy killing someone .
Here's a bit of background on the case, kudos to the guy who threw the punch for speaking to kids about the consequences of violence
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@antipodean at first I thought he was one of those roided up thugs that make the headlines from time to time killing some unsuspecting person with one punch . There's obviously a bit more to this case and I think he's genuinely trying to help the cops but I think they are drawing a long bow here.
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I sympathize with the police in these matters, because stupidity on the turps is so common, but it would be nice if we remembered that there can be a fine line between being careful and being wowsers, and that balance is key.
In other good news, Moko's killers got nowhere, as the Court of Appeal dismissed their appeals, while also noting that they were lucky to avoid sentences of life imprisonment. That's a good outcome as it gives direction for similar future cases where murder is difficult to prove but manslaughter is an option.
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From memory, the victim in that matter was being a bit of a knob, but not violent or aggressive. Just a bit mouthy. I'm not entirely sure it's ever justified punching some guy out just because he's being a bit lippy. Yes, we all think about doing it, but being a thug just because someone is being cheeky is never really on. You also run the risk that you do them serious injury or kill them.
The bit that rankled me in that article is "He partially blamed Asthana's death on late night opening hours, and said he had suffered the loss of his naval career, experience financial hardship, "as well as emotional scarring, guilt, depression and anxiety all as a result of my actions". "
Generally when you go to prison for killing someone you lose your career and therefore experience financial hardship. But at least you're not dead, like the guy you killed is. McFarland looks to be a big boy, and the victim doesn't look very big at all. When you hit someone in the head with that sort of mismatch, you absolutely roll the dice.
It's also a pretty long bow to draw to say that it's the late night opening hours. There were probably 3000 other people out drinking in the CBD that night as well, and very few of them decided to punch someone out over something so minor.
I agree with Godder's sentiments regarding the fine balancing act with liqour enforcement. While it is absolutely necessary in some places, the Ellerslie races is a perfect example of where they have gone overkill. Can't BYO anymore because glammed up girls and guys in suits got too drunk, (but didn't really cause any major trouble). Yet still, the fun police decide they're gonna do something about it, even in the absence of any real violence or disorder (I did lock a guy up there once who was too drunk to notice my car was an unmarked CIB car and kicked it when I honked at him to get off the road, leaving a pretty good dent. But that's another story)
When I was frontline, or worked special events (RWC etc), I was never a fan of locking people up solely for breach of liquor ban etc. I agree that the bans are in place for all the right reasons - not just to stop people taking a heap of cheap piss into town and preloading before going into licenced premises. But also to stop drunk people carrying glass bottles (potential weapons) around town and generally just milling in the street drinking.
In general, they have been quite good for reducing disorder in hotspots. That said, in my past life, I'd had mates locked up for the relatively minor offence of carrying a half empty bottle of lion red from a taxi to the nearest bin outside a nightclub and it's pretty shithouse and not a good look for the cops in the eye of the average citizen. I used to deal with liquor ban breaches either by making people tip it out, leave the area with it (if they had heaps of booze in a car and I didn't want make them waste it) or else my favourite of telling them that I was just gonna go and write in my notebook and if the alcohol was gone by the time I turned back around that they'd be all good, however they disposed of it. I'd then sit in the car and chuckle at a bunch of 18 year olds trying to knock back beers so they wouldn't get poured out. Obviously used in only the right circumstances where the guys weren't already hammered, and weren't causing problems, but always hilarious.
My reasoning was that it was far better enforcement than just being a fluffybunny and locking them up and wasting my time and them ending up with a conviction for something stupidly minor. That said, it was a massive attitude test as well. If they decided they wanted to be a cock, then I enforced the law, because chances were that they were gonna be a cock later on and we'd end up dealing with them then.
Since those times though the balance of enforcement has shifted with liquor ban enforcement and it's now a case of locking people up is only the very last resort, as opposed to where it used to be the first resort, which is absolutely the right move.
At the end of the day, alcohol does a huge amount of social harm, so enforcement is absolutely necessary, but as Godder mentioned, it's quite a balancing act to do it. A huge percentage of frontline lock ups are alcohol related, but it's also unfair to penalise those who can use it responsibly, just because a minority can't.
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@aucklandwarlord said in NZ justice system 2.0:
From memory, the victim in that matter was being a bit of a knob, but not violent or aggressive. Just a bit mouthy. I'm not entirely sure it's ever justified punching some guy out just because he's being a bit lippy.
Ahh, he assaulted a woman first, then got punched for it.
NZ justice system 2.0