10 May

Shonky use of "Discretion" leads to Police Backdown

It has just been announced that a Dunedin Subway worker, Ms Jacke Lang, who had a charge of criminal "theft" laid against her by the Dunedin police, for 'sharing' (=stealing) a glass of Diet Coke with her friend, has had the charge against her dropped by police.

The Society issued a press release earlier today criticising the very poor use of "discretion" by the police in laying the charge for an "offence" that the vast majority of reasonable-minded New Zealanders would consider "to be SO inconsequential that there is NO public interest in proceeding with a prosecution."

"Just look at the waste of police time and resources involved if this trivial and inconsequential case if it had proceeded to Court", says Society president Graham Fox. "The police did charge Ms Lang and then dropped the charges. If this was a Section 59 case involving police "discretion" under Sue Bradford's Anti-smacking Bill, involving parents facing false charges of "child abuse" for light smacking; their children would have been removed from them and put into CYFs care for however long it took the police and CYFS to concede that they had got it wrong in their application of their "discretion". In the case of a parent most families would not want, what should be their private family business, splashed all over National media, such as has happened in Lang's case", he said.

The Society believes that the police were influenced in this backdown by the enormous public outcry over their questionable and ill-advised actions to prosecute - a very poor use of their "discretion" - and perhaps even by an opinion piece in the Dominion Post this morning by Peter Cullen. He concluded that Lang's case of unfair dismissal against her employer would probably succeed in the Employment Court because of an earlier decision issued by the Court in a parallel case. He did not comment on the strength or otherwise of the police case against Lang.

ENDS

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