Police priorities
Josie Pagani wrote:
It’s a good time to be thief. The police appear to have legalised stealing by ignoring it. But God help you if you drive at 57kph in a 50km zone.
My daughter is a university student. The single largest asset she owns is her scooter, which she uses to ride to campus and her part-time jobs.
A couple of weeks ago she locked it up on the street while she sat an exam. Someone tried to steal it. Unable to break the steering lock, the thieves ripped off plastic moulding and cut wiring to hotwire it. They were interrupted by a security guard, who also filmed them.
When my daughter emerged, the scooter was an unusable mess. Call the cops: Too busy. They told her to visit a website, and upload details and the video. No fingerprint dusting. No-one came to check if the thieves were still around. It was dark. She was alone.
A few days later she got an email from the police. They were closing the case. They hadn’t even watched the video of red-handed robbers.
The only way they could be caught now is if they turned up at the cop shop and said, ‘’’We did it guv’. We’re turning ourselves in.’’
The police have decided not to enforce section 226(2) of the Crimes Act 1961, which provides for up to two years in the clink for attempting to nick a vehicle (and seven years for actually pinching one).
Parliament imposed tough penalties. It meant these crimes to be serious. So consider the constitutional consequences of the police deciding to overrule Parliament. If the police are wrong in their judgments about which crimes to enforce, then there is no way for the rest of us to bring about justice.
While the police were too busy to attend the fresh scene of the scooter crime, I was driving up Transmission Gully.
Police cars seemed to be waiting, menacingly, every couple of kilometres. Elsewhere, one of my family got a ticket for driving in an empty bus lane.
Road rules are rules, but who decided that bus lanes and doing 110 on a brand new motorway are a higher priority than robbery?
A very good question.