blogging it real

Every once in a while, you take a look around your surroundings and take a big breath in...but just as you inhale you begin to gag, your lungs scream for fresh air, you begin to lose your vision but it's too late; your senses are overwhelmed by the unmistakable and putrid stench of public relations bullshit.

So, early this week the public are treated to a story about a female police officer who got beaten trying to break up a party in Tauranga.

A dense 30m trail of blood baked under the hot sun yesterday as Tauranga detectives painstakingly marked out evidence after the bashing of a female officer early in the morning. The policewoman, who was hit with a wheel rim during a riot, is in Tauranga Hospital's intensive care ward with a fractured skull, shoulder and nose. Her family were at her side.

Well, that's very sad however when journalists spoke to people who were actually at the party a very different story to the 'poor beaten cop' line began to emerge:

William Roberts, who was asked to act in a security capacity at the double-21st birthday party, said he was surprised at the attitude of some police. "Everyone was happy until the cops turned up. "It all started when a kid got hit to the ground. All I saw was the guy get pushed to the ground, or hit to the ground. "His mates, cousins, uncles and aunties all came in and said, 'You can't do that'. Things just got real heated."

And then more from the girl whose party it was:

Stacey Trevino, whose 21st birthday was the reason for the party at a Welcome Bay hall, said police "came out two batons apiece and started going for it". She alleged officers used particular force against a 27-year-old man who appeared in court yesterday in relation to the attack on the police officer. Ms Trevino said she was standing in the hall entrance when four or five officers brought the man into the hall. "He was tied with his arms and legs behind his head. They started beating him with batons." She claimed the officers closed the doors to the main part of the hall and continued beating the man while she and others banged on the doors.

And then just when it's starting to sound like the police turned up at a party and start smashing revellers and instigated a brawl what do we have...a policeman who sustained horrific injuries in an attack (conveniently photgraphed) decides to break his 10-year silence:

Mr Orr decided to speak publicly for the first time about the ordeal he suffered - not just during the assault, but in the courtroom facing his attackers and back on the job - after partygoers claimed that police used excessive force to quell the violence.

He said he felt disgusted to see the same thing happening in Tauranga, with the police being forced to defend their use of pepper spray and batons in the riot. It was symptomatic of a system that favoured criminals over victims, he said.

Imagine that, the poor police having to justify their use of weapons on the public.

Mr Orr left the police in 2001, disillusioned by that system and what he believed was political undermining of the force. "The culture had been attacked," he said. "Legislation was being steadily brought in that was all about offenders' rights. The police were steadily being hamstrung in their ability to manage public safety."

This story did a nice little job of turning media coverage away from allegations of police brutality and squarely back to the poor assaulted police line.

I wonder what odds the TAB would give on Mr Orr's decision to speak out after a decade having come with a little prompting from above?

Also I wonder if this same police "culture" that Mr Orr says was being judiciously attacked was the same one the public are learning about through in a whole heap of historical rape trials in Bay of Plenty?

Around the blogosphere I can't help but think the whole women kissing at the cricket outrage over at blogs like Norightturn, is a little fucking precious.

Here are the facts: Some dumb-arse hired-thug security guard tells two women to stop kissing at a cricket game (they recieve an apology from that cricket club) then some manager of another sports stadium says hypothetically he'd have security stop women kissing at cricket games too.

It's not an attack on New Zealanders' civil rights it's a just a couple of morons mouthing off, I mean really, who gives a fuck?