A traffic checkpoint that was used to target euthanasia supporters has been criticised by the privacy commissioner, and a lawyer says it points to insufficient training.
Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) yesterday found the checkpoint in 2016 was both unlawful and unjustified.
Officers were investigating a suspected suicide and looking for evidence to prosecute Suzy Austen, from a local branch of Exit International.
Police are only supposed to do traffic checkpoints to enforce transport regulations and the IPCA said officers should have known they could not use it as a front for a suicide investigation.
It said stopping people in this way was an illegitimate use of power, unlawfully restricting citizens' freedom of movement.
Suzy Austen's lawyer, Doctor Donald Stevens QC, said the first obligation of government is to ensure the maintenance of law and order, which requires an adequately resourced, trained and experienced police force.
He said too many experienced officers were leaving because they were burnt out, working for a stretched and stressed police force.
"There are police officers leaving when they have quiet experience in training and would be in a position to take leadership roles," he said.
"They're taking institutional memory with them, and we're being left with junior officers who don't have the experience or training to be doing what they're doing."
Assistant Police Commissioner Bill Searle said that was wrong.
"I would say that the police training is better than it's ever been," he said.
"I've been in the police for quite a long time and I'm confident that the training that we get is of a very high standard, so I wouldn't agree with that at all."
This was not the first time police had been criticised over their use of traffic checkpoints for another purpose, however.
An IPCA report into the 2007 Urewera raids also ruled the police stopping and searching of vehicles was illegal, unjustified and unreasonable.
In this latest investigation officers told the authority similar checkpoints had been used for intelligence gathering.
That left Privacy Commissioner John Edwards with serious concerns.
"The circumstances in which they can be established and the purposes for which they can be established."
"Those purposes are about the admin of road safety laws, not about general welfare or crime prevention or investigation."
He said the police had taken advantage of the public's trust in them to collect information from people who are not legally required to provide it.
