police powers
Society is only held together by the respect that the average person has for authority, without this respect or even fear we are left with anarchy and destruction.
This respect is very hard to achieve and very easily lost.
We are not unique with our attitude to roading police, world wide they are disliked even despised with the common view that they are merely tax collectors with more interest in issuing tickets than the often official line "of saving lives".
The mistake made here in NZ was in 1992 when the then minister of police ,John Banks, played the old law and order card to get elected and promised to increase the police by 900 officers. This ploy worked and so to keep his promise he amalgamated the traffic cops into the police force and in one foul swoop kept his pledge without adding a single extra officer. That one act did more to undermine the relationship between the police and the public since the springbok fiasco of 1981.
It is a credit to the NZ public that we are still by and large a law abiding country, however it is up to the police to resist the very natural temptation to overreach their powers and to alienate the very public they serve.
This challenge to administer the law fairly and justly applies to all who are involved with enforcing the law from the lowly traffic cop to the police commissioner including lawyers and judges.
It is their collective responsibility to enforce the laws fairly for all and not to be seen as tax collectors or political hacks otherwise it will be they who ultimately cause the breakdown of law
We all know of examples of unfair speeding tickets etc and often refer to them as just another tax, but at the other end is the example of how complicit the police are with the FBI as in the Dot Com case, both examples undermine the public trust in the rule of law
Go Nuts
This respect is very hard to achieve and very easily lost.
We are not unique with our attitude to roading police, world wide they are disliked even despised with the common view that they are merely tax collectors with more interest in issuing tickets than the often official line "of saving lives".
The mistake made here in NZ was in 1992 when the then minister of police ,John Banks, played the old law and order card to get elected and promised to increase the police by 900 officers. This ploy worked and so to keep his promise he amalgamated the traffic cops into the police force and in one foul swoop kept his pledge without adding a single extra officer. That one act did more to undermine the relationship between the police and the public since the springbok fiasco of 1981.
It is a credit to the NZ public that we are still by and large a law abiding country, however it is up to the police to resist the very natural temptation to overreach their powers and to alienate the very public they serve.
This challenge to administer the law fairly and justly applies to all who are involved with enforcing the law from the lowly traffic cop to the police commissioner including lawyers and judges.
It is their collective responsibility to enforce the laws fairly for all and not to be seen as tax collectors or political hacks otherwise it will be they who ultimately cause the breakdown of law
We all know of examples of unfair speeding tickets etc and often refer to them as just another tax, but at the other end is the example of how complicit the police are with the FBI as in the Dot Com case, both examples undermine the public trust in the rule of law
Go Nuts
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