One particularly telling response has electrified a wide variety of the blogsphere, but there's many other blood diamonds in the interview:
PAUL Yeah but take the man on I think the front page of the New Zealand Herald yesterday. Now this is a fellow with tattoos on his shoulders, he wears a black singlet and he drives flash cars and the Police keep pulling him over. He won the Lotto. He won a million bucks in the Lotto but because the cops decide he doesn’t look like the kinda guy who should be driving these cars they keep pulling him over. Is that the kind of persecution we can start to get? If the Police don’t like the cut of your jib you're gonna get persecuted.As everyone knows, people in suits cannot commit crimes. Besides, the cops had their reasons. What more excuse do you need?
JUDITH Well that’s actually under the current law. What we're looking at with the Assets Recovery Unit is that they're going after big crime and big criminals.
PAUL Take my point, he doesn’t look right.
JUDITH I also noticed that the Police said there was another side to the story, but look Paul you're always going to get instances like that, but frankly the Police have got far better things to do than worry about people who are Lotto winners.
PAUL Yeah but the truth is, under the Criminal Proceeds Act, the Police can take your property if they suspect you're dodgy.
JUDITH But you’ve got the right to get it back, you’ve got the right to claim it
The Police have a right to confiscate property and the citizen has a right to request its return..? Are our Police being trained by Somali pirates?
PAUL Yeah but then you’ve got a whole matter of procedure to go through because the cops have decided they suspect you got the property criminally.
JUDITH Well actually Police would lose all credibility if they went round doing that unnecessarily.
THAT's a check and balance? That the cops might be worried about losing credibility? Who needs credibility when you have the monopoly on extortion?
PAUL No, but what has been proposed in this is an extension of powers for those people and I wonder how can you possibly think that these people should have the same powers as the Police, to detain you, to use reasonable force, to rub you down, have a search?
JUDITH Well you might well think that the Child Youth and Family Inspectors might want to.
Collins considers CYF might have a right to detain, search and restrain people forcibly. Isn't this the sort of stuff the National opposition used to accuse Clark's Labour of? Ah, but the jackboot is on the other foot now.
PAUL You're also proposing an end to the right to silence from groups of three or more people thought to be involved in a single criminal activity. Now obviously that’s aimed at gangs, get them all in a room and make them talk, but the right to silence goes back hundreds of years.Hey Jude, who keeps people safe from the State? The State is not some all-knowing, all-seeing benevolence machine y'know.
JUDITH Yes, and obviously we've got to constantly be looking at the tension between the individual's rights and those of the State in terms of trying to keep people safe, and that’s what all our law and order policies are about Paul. There's on theme, it's about trying to actually deal with crime and keep New Zealanders safe
JUDITH Well people should be always concerned about our freedoms because we are a free country. However having said that DNA is the modern version of fingerprints and the Police will not be keeping samples if people are not actually convicted.DNA is like fingerprints, and charcoal sketches are like MRIs. There is a great divide between reasonable information and too much information.
PAUL It's the law. The Police are now able to take a sample of DNA from people they intend to arrest for an imprisonable offence.Oh, so DNA is not like fingerprints! The Police have no right to one's fingerprints until arrest. But DNA can be taken before arrest. This is done to ensure that there might be at least some evidence before Police arrest someone.
JUDITH Yes.
PAUL Why not make them wait till after they’ve arrested you, anyone can say I intend to arrest you for an imprisonable offence.
JUDITH Well obviously they need to have the evidence before they arrest people, and this is one of the things we're trying to do is to make sure they’ve got the right person
PAUL Is it inevitable that we're gonna have to move towards becoming something almost of a Police state if we want to crack these?
JUDITH I don’t think we need to do that at all.
We're already there, aren't we?
