FAR LEFT GOVT PICKS ALLEGDED FAR RIGHT ‘OFFENDER’ AS THEIR FIRST TARGET
A response to an article by RNZ, 12/1/2020, quoting Professor Andrew Geddis, in relation to the search warrant undertaken by New Zealand Police, at the home address of Dieuwe de Boer’s home address, in pursuance of the search for prohibited firearms.
Whatever your political beliefs, whether you are far left, centre, far right, or indeed anywhere in between or elsewhere; this case in the end is all about rule of law which applies to us all, therefore, you have to question the motivation and judgement that led to this Police action.
Did this occur because someone from a far-left Labour Government decided to pick on someone they see as being from the far right? Were they picked on because they challenged Govt ideology through a parliamentary submission? Was the motivation criminal resolution? Or shoring up a wobbly and now shady Government who has failed to deliver on many of its promises and are desperate to silence democratic discourse from its critical public. Or was is it that the Police did have clear, tried and tested intelligence that indicated that de Boer had, at that time, at his homes address, prohibited firearms.
This blog aims to further Professor Geddis’s opinion that unanswered questions remain, what those questions look like, and indeed, what some of the answers are.
Dieuwe de Boer’s blog is a good starting point as that raises some questions. He states the Police arrived with a warrant and plenty of armed officers, which media have indicated were armed offender squad staff. He states the Police showed him a copy of the warrant, which said, they believed he was in possession of a firearm that had been fitted with a now prohibited magazine, thereby making the whole firearm illegal to possess. The Police informed him that it was because he had posted online that he had one.
This claim can easily be refuted by the Police if not true, as I am sure they were videoing the search, or they should have been, and as a copy of the warrant is available to de Boer and held on record, I am going to take a leap of faith here and say this statement is true, but, what questions does it raise?
Well, this tracks back to Professor Geddis and parliamentary legal privilege. Have the Police obtained a warrant based on information that they should never have been able to obtain or use? The answer to that is maybe yes, and maybe no.
On the ‘maybe yes side’, for the Police to obtain a warrant they must lay information to a Justice or Court outlining what the intelligence is relating to a crime, and where it is being committed. So, in this case, possession of an illegal firearm and that it was in possession of de Boer at his home address. The provenance being that he had posted online about that very fact; de Boer’s own words.
I have written, laid, applied for and obtained hundreds of search warrants covering crimes such as drugs, firearms, child protection, stolen goods and counterfeit currency. So, I know how this works. There shouldn’t be easy and hard Justices but there are, and the Police who often apply for warrants know who they are. In this case, I can’t think of any though who would just grant a warrant to enter and search for an illegal firearm without asking several questions. What those questions are I can only suggest from experience, but they might cover;
· Is that all you have, just his posting?
· What is his background, who is he, what is his antecedents?
· How do you know he has it now?
· Is it at his house?
· What other intelligence do you have on this person?
· How old is the online posting?
· Why do you need a warrant can’t you just go around to the address and get it?
Not even the softest Justice should authorise a warrant based on an online posting which by the time they applied for it must have been old, the information would have needed to contain more intelligence. If that intelligence included the parliamentary submission, then the whole application is possibly contaminated.
The age of the posting is critical in applying for warrants. For example, if I apply for a drugs warrant based on an address where police have informant information that is tried and tested, that says, drugs are being dealt at an address on an almost daily basis, then it will be granted on the assumption that the Police will use the warrant to their best tactical advantage.
Also, if the application was that ‘A’ is in possession of a kilo of cocaine, a Justice would ask where the information came from, so it needs to be tried and tested, then comes the age of the information. If the informant in this example says that it was three months ago, then I cannot see a Justice authorising a warrant. The information is simply too old.
One of the most shameful events for a cop is applying for a warrant and having it refused. This is handled by the application first going through a quality control process within the Police. The applying officer completes the information form which is submitted to an authorising officer. I have been the authorising officer and can say that if an application came before me on the posting alone, I would not have authorised it.
On the ‘maybe no side’, if the application to the authorising officer did contain other intelligence such as surveillance product, human resource intelligence, as well as the posting, then the warrant would have been authorised within the Police and granted by the Justice. The Police would have led with the posting excuse at the address to protect their assets.
Within the blog de Boer hints that Police were critical of the gun buy back scheme, this could be a cheap shot, but as the Police must have been videoing the search this can, and should, be challenged by them from a reputational stance if nothing else.
His blog indicates that he sold it or passed the rifle on and says more than once that the rifle was just a bunny firearm, good for hitting paper and bunnies. The most favoured weapons for organised contract murders is a .22 revolver. The reason being at close range, it is deadly, and a revolver ensures no cartridges are left behind for the Police.
I have owned a .22 rifle with a magazine in the past. The rifle is deadly to rabbits, hares, and could be just as deadly to humans. To try and play down the effectiveness of this rifle due to its calibre is not just naive but also duplicitous, as any hunter will tell you it is extremely effective.
The blog indicates that he passed it on, that he didn’t own it anymore, and in any case, he was using the larger magazine as an example. It is clear from the blog that he has failed to tell the Police what he has done with the rifle. He should have had some form of contact for the person he sold the rifle to, name or number, and failing to hand those details over leaves me with the impression that his halo isn’t completely intact. The Police left the address, leaving de Boer in possession of other firearms, it seems they were happy with him to remain in possession of those.
If the Police have intelligence to suggest that he is not a responsible person to hold a firearms licence then they need to act on that, if they don’t, then it sort of cements the position that they were treating this case as an example, where they just expected to get a positive search and charge, and by leaving him with other firearms means they were targeting that rifle alone due to the magazine size.
Professor Geddis covers possible scenarios relating to the blog post, its replication of the parliamentary submission, whether the Police knew it was a replication at that time, and if the Police told the court, Justice or Judge.
The Police say they have not broken the law. I hope that is true.
The Police, according to de Boer, stated it was because of the blog post. Internal procedure for obtaining a warrant and the information needed to lay an application for a warrant; background checks, antecedents, family, job, car, social media etc, almost certainly means that Police would have linked the blog post to de Boer, his website, and his parliamentary submission.
As the information for a warrant is secret, we will never know what the intelligence was. And this is right and proper. For the Police to do their business, gain the trust of, and protect informants, information for a warrant must be held secret.
Whether the law has been broken? I don’t think we will ever know, even if de Boer takes legal action. But one thing is clear, this was the first activity by Police in pursuance of the new Bill and it could not have backfired more if they had tried. In any new Bill, and certainly one as high profile as this, and one where Police knew he was once in possession of it, and was a known right-wing or conservative commentator, they would have wanted to get it right and get a result; they failed.
The action has the same hallmarks on it as the gun buy scheme, well intentioned, but hurried, not thought through, lacking good intelligence, and ran the risk of failing. It reeks of wobbly interference by a government desperate to shore up rushed legislation that exposes a lack of maturity, overrun by political ideology.
The other side is that, Police did have other intelligence but were out manoeuvred on the day. It has long been known that law enforcement in New Zealand have wanted to curb gun ownership and, having got an opportunity, have taken it with open arms, notwithstanding the shortcomings and will make it work somehow.
The blog indicates six officers through the front door, more around the back, and then more were called. All armed. All for a search of a home where they would have known he was married, with young children. Wife can clearly corroborate de Boer, and the police video can also confirm it. Searches are conducted one room at a time with the suspect present in the room. The search videoed, exhibit officer present, officer in charge of the search nearby and normally two searchers.
The blog description of events is from one perspective, another one would be that Police attended heavy to start with, then withdrew to a more proportionate size. My view is that it was heavy and unless there was intelligence to suggest otherwise a less heavy-handed approach would have been enough in the circumstances.
In research for this piece I have read through de Boers website and some of his blogs. He is not far right and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be placed in that category, unless of course you are on the extreme left yourself.
From a law enforcement and critical intelligence analysis stance, I would place the group somewhere around conservative towards right wing. Not my personal politics, and not a group that I would have chosen as the first raid of the new Bill, unless I had surveillance intelligence that told me quite categorically the firearm was there. Which reinforces some of the points I have already made.
Election year has kicked off and it has all the hallmarks of lessons not being learnt. The problem with extremist politics is that the majority of the public are not extremists.