Roast Busters Day 82: Roll me over

No progress in the 'Roast Busters' West Auckland rape club case?  No shit. Most people have figured out why by now.  It's because the NZ Police operation is a cover-up focused on diverting the victims away from a prosecution and there is no actual investigation of the offenders because the Commissioner himself has declared the gang to be acquitted on the basis that a son of a serving police officer cannot by definition be found guilty of rape.  

NZ Herald:

--

Police remain tight-lipped on the progress of the Roast Busters underage sex investigation, but want to assure the public they are doing all they can for the alleged victims.

[...]

Shortly after she announced the formation of a multi-agency team dubbed Operation Clover, which would work together on the Roast Busters case.

Ms Malthus has refused to say exactly what that team are doing to resolve the case. But she told the Herald that the investigation had continued over Christmas and New Year.

"It is a comprehensive and lengthy investigation and the focus for the joint agency Operation Clover team continues to be on speaking to young people and their parents," she said.

"It is of the utmost importance that the privacy, health and wellbeing of these young people is strictly upheld. We appreciate the high level of public interest in this case, however, as is routine with an investigation of this nature, we will not discuss any operational aspects and no further comment will be made at this time."

--

The only reason this story has re-emerged was because a teenager was arrested for putting similar material to the Roast Busters videos on Facebook.  The comparison is so obvious and damning of the NZ Police that most media seem to have avoided reporting it.  Radio Live reported it, which is where I heard it yesterday but nothing online at the NZ Herald.  Found on Stuff via Taranaki Daily News:

--

In the New Plymouth District Court yesterday, Judge Allan Roberts said the community deserved to know who was involved in the high-profile case.

The representative age-group rugby player who pleaded guilty in November last year to a charge of making an intimate visual recording at an Oakura house party on October 11.

Greenslade then posted the video on a private Facebook page accessed by other close friends.

Greenslade received four months community detention by way of a curfew from 7pm to 7am seven days a week, and 125 hours community work after the $5000 offered to the victim for emotional harm was taken into account.

The two 18-year-old friends, who have interim name suppression, have pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting the 17-year-old, including rape, sexual violation and indecent assault, in the same incident.

One of the two has also been charged with taking an intimate visual recording.

The two are to go to trial later this year.

--

Remember the excuse Det. Malthus used last time to explain why nothing had happened with her Operation Clover was that it was the exams coming up and the victims had to focus on that first.  Now the holidays have come and gone she isn't even offering an excuse anymore - it's none of our business, nothing to see here, move along.

Which politician will challenge the notion that members of the NZ Police - and apparently their offspring - carry with them an immunity from prosecution which no other person has?  I ask that question because no politician I've seen has been prepared to deal with this.  They show initial concern, issue a press release, trigger a conflicted - if not outrightly corrupt - 'conduct' investigation (which the Commissioner has assured us that all his staff will be fully exonerated in anyway), but they lose interest, they are too weak to ask the hard questions to the Police Minister, it is not treated as the crisis it is.  It's not their fight, it's not their portfolio, they are that bystander that could do something but just retweets.  They end up using their authority to validate the police.  Opposition spokesperson Jacinda Ardern has already done that much in Select Committee with the Commissioner.  

They let them off under the impression that continuing a cover-up is necessary to maintain confidence in the police.  This tells something of the hollow credibility of the institution more than it does about the mentality of the politicians.  Rooting out corrupt practice is too difficult, too damaging, too dreary a task for politicians when it comes to anything fundamental.  Everyone plays nice and takes tea and studiously avoids conflict in these circles no matter what horrors or war crimes they may have perpetrated.  Some politicians may be antagonistic on the face of it, but the issues that exercise them are often epically petty.  On the hard cases though, like this present case, nobody wants that fight, and if there was a fight they would walk the other way, maybe without even a retweet of symbolic support.  NZ always does well on the corruption rankings because they measure perception not reality.

All the dodgy Waitemata D's have to do to make this go away is to do nothing.  All the politicians have to do is nothing.  All the IPCA has to do is take their normal 5-7 years to issue a report.  

It is Day 82 since the rape club was exposed on the evening news and 82 days of the NZ Police saying their actions and their videos are lawful and only 'morally wrong'.  This gang is legal as far as the cops are concerned - all the self-declared rapists are at-large.  'Safer communities together' in this instance - as in so many others - would be better achieved without the NZ Police.