Latest news with #lawAndOrder
RNZ News
29-06-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Sentencing reforms introduced cap potential discounts and bring new aggravating factors
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says the sentencing reforms were about restoring real consequences for crime. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii Sentencing reforms which will cap discounts judges can give to an offender and introduce aggravating factors at sentencing, have come into effect as the government targets tougher crime consequences. The Labour Party says the move will only exacerbate an already clogged court system, add huge costs to the taxpayer by increasing the prison population, and will not reduce crime or the number of victims. But Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said the sentencing reforms, which came into effect on Sunday, were about restoring real consequences for crime. Communities and hardworking New Zealanders should not be made to live and work in fear of criminals who had a "flagrant disregard for the law, corrections officers and the general public", he said. "We know that undue leniency has resulted in a loss of public confidence in sentencing, and our justice system as a whole. We had developed a culture of excuses." The tougher stance was part of the government's plan to "restore law and order, which we know is working", he said. "It signals to victims that they deserve justice, and that they are our priority." The changes include: ACT MP Nicole McKee welcomed the new rules saying there had been a steady erosion of public confidence in the justice system. "Offenders faced fewer and shorter prison sentences, while communities paid the price." ACT MP Nicole McKee welcomed the new rules. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone She said police data showed a 134 percent increase in serious assault leading to injury from 2017 to 2023 under "Labour's failed experiment of being kind to criminals". "We've restored Three Strikes , and from today additional measures are coming into force to make the message even clearer." She said the vulnerability of people who worked alone or in a business attached to their home would be "recognised in law" thanks to ACT's coalition agreement to crack down on retail crime with the introduction of the aggravating factors. Labour's spokesperson for Justice Duncan Webb, however, said tough on crime sounded good but did not actually have the effect of reducing crime. "We've got to be smart on crime as well. We've got to address the causes of crime which we know are poverty, family violence, mental illness and addiction, and until we address those, there'll continue to be crime and there'll continue to be victims." Tougher sentences were just one option, he said. "If we're gonna be serious about reducing crime and reducing harm, we've got to address those causes of crime." Labour spokesperson for Justice Duncan Webb said tougher sentences were just one option. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver Evidence showed tough on crime initiatives such as the Three Strikes law, which the government had reinstated, did not reduce victims, Webb said. "Victims are absolutely central to the approach and the best thing we could ever have is avoiding someone becoming a victim and that means addressing the causes of crime before crime occurs. "And absolutely I understand that when people are victims of crime they want to see the perpetrator punished and that's the right thing to happen, but I'd rather see the appropriate amount of resources put into mental health, reducing poverty, [and] eliminating homelessness, because those are things that create crime and we've seen them all increase under this government." The fact white collar crime such as fraud - which was one of the few crimes that responded to deterrents - was not captured by Three Strikes was inconsistent, Webb said. Webb said he had sought feedback from those in the social services, intervention, and criminal justice sectors. "They're all frustrated with the fact the direction that's being taken is going to clog up the courts, it's going to create more offenders, it's going to create more victims and it's not actually going to address what we really want to address which is the things that cause crime." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Telegraph
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Woke police chiefs whinge about underfunding when the real problem is their warped priorities
Readers of this newspaper will, throughout its long history, have been among the most ardent supporters of the police. We are traditionally pro law and order and take a dim view of rotters. It feels like that time is well and truly over. Monday's main Telegraph story, in advance of Wednesday's spending review by Rachel Reeves, which reported the concerns of senior officers that the police service is 'broken' and that underpaid and overworked personnel are leaving in droves because of funding cuts, attracted well over two thousand comments. They ranged from 'Diddums' to 'It's all your own stupid fault' with a good deal of colourful hostility in between. Honestly, you would struggle to find more derogatory remarks among the police's long-running foes at The Guardian. I noticed a similarly unsympathetic reaction a week ago when Met chief Sir Mark Rowley protested that police would have to choose which crimes to investigate if they didn't get more cash. As if the public, until now, had enjoyed a superb and rapid response to its burglaries, muggings, car, bike and phone thefts and our town centres positively thrummed with the purposeful presence of bobbies on the beat. 'Yes, Sir Mark, times must really be hard if you can only send six officers to arrest a retired police volunteer over a single tweet,' sneered one disgruntled taxpayer, perfectly capturing the mood of seething resentment. This collapse in trust is as precipitous as it is shocking. A widespread feeling has clearly taken hold that police are no longer doing the job we expect them to do, while interfering in things that are none of their damn business. The story of the London couple who were obliged last week to 'steal back' their own car after being told by police they did not know when they would be able to investigate thieves who took the Jaguar away on a flat-bed truck (but do call 101 if you find it, they were told) presents a snapshot of a frustrated public having to take the law into their own hands like a group of extremely polite, Emma Bridgewater-owning vigilantes. While many physical crimes go largely ignored, activist constabularies are doing a roaring trade in online offences. The preposterous yet sinister non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), an Orwellian development of the College of Policing back in 2014, are frequently cited by police critics, as is the clampdown on free speech which is increasingly used to suppress popular discontent about things like the annual £4.7 billion bill to keep migrants in hotels and look after them. Those of us who, for some strange reason, think it's outrageous to spend the equivalent of every single penny in tax paid by the population of Manchester on accommodating tens of thousands of young males who broke into our country, used to be called 'racists'. But I see we have got a promotion, ladies and gentlemen. According to Prevent [a counter-terrorism programme], we are no longer racists, we are 'terrorists'! If we dare to express doubts about uncontrolled immigration and lack of integration, that is. That's the same Prevent which failed to prevent Axel Rudakubana slaughtering a dance class of little girls. And which, according to a 2023 report by Sir William Shawcross, concentrates too much on the largely mythical 'far Right' and not enough on Islamist terror. The College of Policing, I am reliably informed, encourages the same delusional appeasement of the group which poses by far the biggest threat to our national security. The criminalising of the white indigenous population, running in parallel to the woke appeasement of actual criminals, goes some way to explaining this new cordial loathing of the police, I think. Unbelievably, over 60 of our fellow citizens are slapped with an NCHI every single day for 'hateful' thoughts or conduct, many of them Monty Pythonesque in their absurdity. While senior police moan about Home Secretary Yvette Cooper not winning them a big enough payout in the spending review, there seem to be adequate funds to arrest and stigmatise law-abiding people. Only this week, I got a very worried email from a reader, Carolyn, who had complained to the police about a man who has been camping for several weeks in the park where her children play. The surrounding area stinks of urine and faeces and there are scattered remnants of drug use. When Carolyn and other mums walk past they have seen the man put his hand down his trousers to play with himself. The camper's appearance suggested to her that he was an African migrant. 'Using the term 'migrant' therefore did not strike me as anything other than a fair assumption,' says Carolyn. Uh-oh. Obviously, in the bonkers world of PC policing it will now be the anxious lady who complained about a threat to her community who is warned about causing trouble. 'It would seem that any offence caused to me is secondary to the offence of Hate Crime,' Carolyn says. Correct. An officer emailed Carolyn to say that police did not have the powers to remove the tent from the park. 'With regard to the hand down the trousers,' he said, 'Many people from all different backgrounds do this as a cultural/social trend and have done for a while, we often see members of the public doing this all around the city. We will speak with him about this though and advise him of the perception this could cause. I also suggest you reframe (sic) from referring to him as a 'migrant' and making comments about 'Are we paying him to take the proverbial out of us all?'… These can be seen as derogative (sic) terms and possibly a hate crime, especially when you probably know nothing about him.' If you seek a perfect illustration of why the police service is 'broken' and officers are deserting in droves, look no further than this jaw-dropping inversion of good and bad guys. Intimidating man from alien culture seemingly exposing himself in public and peeing, crapping and doing drugs where your kids play? Completely fine, culturally appropriate, nothing to be done about it. Englishwoman suggests the man is a 'migrant' who is taking advantage of our absurdly generous system? Oh dear, oh dear – your hurty words will be taken down, Madam, and used in evidence against you. Now, it's a fair bet that many of the public-spirited young people who aspire to become police officers still think it is Carolyn's side they should be on. A rookie error, I'm afraid. 'Recruits who join the force don't realise the police are so captured,' a senior source tells me. Officers now lack maturity and experience Police retention has been a problem for a long time. It's got much worse since the higher echelons subscribed to the anti-white Critical Race Theory and adopted a witless, Leftist ideology that would have been abhorrent to their predecessors. The number of resignations in the police started to exceed the number of retirements nationally around 2023. What this means in practice, as I was told after Essex Police came to my own door on Remembrance Sunday, is that many officers now lack the experience and maturity to make common-sense decisions and bin spurious allegations of racial hatred that flatter the identity-politics obsessions of their superiors. 'It's not uncommon for uniform shifts to be about 50 per cent probationers, and they might be running with an acting sergeant barely out of his probationary period (two years) in some cases,' warns my source. The Conservatives' decision, in 2020, to lower the application age to 17 (to join at 18) as part of their training means that a lot of young people without much life experience, who don't know what they're letting themselves in for, find policing a nasty shock to the system. Once they're in, probationers have to cope with complicated, badly-designed computer systems that add hours to already heavy workloads. They have very little time to conduct inquiries and pick up more and more stressful cases, meanwhile having to deal with the aggressive, ever-more-volubly-entitled, human-rights-aware dregs of our society. After all that, if you can still muster the courage to be a first-class constable who fiercely defends the public against wrong 'uns but swears a bit and leaves violent offenders feeling they weren't treated with enough dignity then expect your Pontius Pilate of a chief constable to throw you under the Hurty Feelings bus. That is exactly what happened to Lorne Castle, a Dorset officer who has twice won a national bravery award, including one for rescuing an elderly woman from a swollen river in 2023. A shameful betrayal The 46-year-old father of three was dismissed without notice for gross misconduct after bodycam footage captured him trying to arrest a teenager who was believed to have assaulted an elderly man (the boy, who later turned out to be carrying a knife). If you watch the footage, you can experience the frightening, febrile atmosphere in which Lorne Castle was trying to carry out his thankless task. He shouted and swore, telling the lad: 'Stop resisting or I'm going to smash you.' A veteran officer tells me that 'it looked like a good arrest'. But a panel found PC Castle did not treat the teenager with 'courtesy' or 'respect', and Dorset Police said 'his shouting, swearing, finger pointing, taking hold of the boy's face and throat and suggested use of leg restraints was not necessary, reasonable or proportionate'. The force said no further action was taken against the teenager – of course it wasn't! – but he was issued with an out of court disposal for possessing the knife. I ask you, why would anybody risk phone seizures, suspensions and months of stress over complaints that usually turn out to be baseless but which see them treated like criminals? While clueless top brass in their woke ivory towers put saving their career before protecting their officers. In my book, a man of the calibre of Lorne Castle is worth more to the people of this country than every chief constable put together. So let us hear no more whingeing about underfunding leading to reduced services and driving officers away. Blame a warped sense of priorities promoted by activist police chiefs, a shameful betrayal of the British bobby and the demonisation of ordinary people for expressing legitimate fears. If the police have lost the support of Telegraph readers, then they are lost indeed.
Bloomberg
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Reeves Rejects Police Funding Demands Ahead of Spending Review
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves rejected demands for extra police funding ahead of her spending review on Wednesday, despite warnings from senior officers that it could mean the government misses its flagship pledges on law and order. The Treasury imposed a settlement on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on Monday after weeks of negotiations went down to the wire, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke anonymously about private negotiations. The Times of London first reported how the settlement was reached.
Telegraph
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The LA riots could destroy Donald Trump's presidency
We're only a few days into the anti-riot crackdowns in Los Angeles by various armed government enforcers and already there are lives at stake. No, not the lives of the hundreds of protestors out on the streets across America's second-largest city, but the political lives – or at least longevity – of some of the highest-profile personalities to emerge during president Trump's second turn in the White House. There's Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, already weakened by her disastrous performance during last year's wildfire chaos and now even more compromised by the optics of incompetence as her city erupts yet again. And, of course, California governor Gavin Newsom, whose unbridled presidential ambitions could take a fatal hit if his state does not return to law and order – and fast. The riots are a test for Kristi Noem, the US secretary of Homeland Security, aka 'ICE Barbie' – who made waves when she toured a Salvadoran mega prison in March sporting a $50,000 Rolex. Her hardline anti-migrant stance has made her a close Trump confidant – but can it stand up to the ire of the masses she helped mobilise by her often cruel migrant deportation sprees? But the most consequential political life at stake here is that of Donald Trump himself – whose ultra-adversarial, bully-like tactics have yet to be tested as they are right now in California. There has never been anything quite like the anti-ICE protests during either of Trump's terms. The Women's Marches and BLM protests of his first administration may have, at times, turned rowdy and chaotic – but their violence was never directed at the White House like it is right now. This moment is different. Very different. For one thing, the conflict in Los Angeles is a direct response to Trump's hardline policies – in this case the illegal migrant crackdown – and are being mounted by those personally impacted, rather than virtue-signalling college kids motivated by 'privilege guilt.' The riots also come after 18 months of anti-Israel protests that have been some of the most violent protests in modern US history. America's radical Left has not only perfected aggressive adversarialism since Hamas' October 7 attacks – it's normalised it. And now it has even further weaponised this disregard for civility on what could be a far larger scale. Back in 2020, the National Guard were deployed to merely help support local law enforcement efforts when the BLM riots turned critical, and the Left was practically apoplectic. This time, the National Guard are Trump's main characters – and the Marines could be the White House's next course of action. This is a level of pushback practically without precedent – risky and uncertain amid an atmosphere of anti-Trumpism whose long-anticipated #resistance has finally materialised. Now unleashed, the California protesters could prove the ultimate – and most unanticipated – foils to a Trump White House whose run of nearly unchallenged luck looks like it is coming to an end. For many illegal migrants facing deportation, the spectre of arrest or even death rivals the potential violence awaiting in their home nations. These are people with literally nothing to lose – and thanks to Joe Biden there are millions of them existing along America's fringes. These are not the college-educated agitators who fuelled BLM in 2020 and 'Save Gaza' more recently – with middle class families and aspirational futures at stake. Fuelled by governor Newsom's surprising anti-Trump resolve – on Sunday he dared Trump's henchmen to arrest him – the protests could very well continue deep into the week, or even weeks; arrests, injuries or even deaths be damned. Trump has staked his legacy and the future of Maga on an uncompromising commitment to his ideals – and an end to illegal migration has been at the top since he branded Mexicans as 'rapists' on the very first day of his very first campaign a decade ago. Now those Mexicans are brandishing their nation's flag as they finally seek retribution. The past weekend's violence was practically inevitable – even if no one clearly saw it coming. With America already up in flames over Gaza – and the left always salivating at the prospect of an even more spectacular intersectional cause célèbre – the mayhem could easily spread beyond California in the coming days. The #resistance has finally arrived and it's far bloodier than anyone could have anticipated. It may still be early in Trump 2.0, but the Los Angeles riots could easily emerge as its most defining moment.
ABC News
06-06-2025
- Business
- ABC News
With a 'direct ear' to the treasurer, have police outranked paramedics as the SA government's top priority?
"Having the direct ear of the treasurer certainly is an advantage for me as a chief executive and it's my job to make sure I exploit that." One day after the South Australian government handed down a budget with law and order as its centrepiece, SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens smiled as he summed up the fortuitous position he finds himself in, just nine months out from the next state election. "It's one of those few occasions where we have a senior cabinet minister as the minister for police," he told reporters. "I'm grateful for that level of focus that the government is putting on law and order and policing in South Australia." Mr Stevens was referring to Stephen Mullighan — a long-serving Labor cabinet minister who happens to not only be police minister, but treasurer too. Having a cabinet boss who is also in charge of government spending gives Mr Stevens a unique opportunity to wield influence, and the latest state budget could be seen as a case in point. Hundreds of millions of dollars for more police officers, firearms and infrastructure formed part of what Mr Mullighan described as "the largest boost to police funding in the state's history". As ABC News previously noted, there was no mistaking the budget message the government was trying to send, with photos of police officers splashed across the budget papers and projected onto screens around the budget lock-up room. But turn the clock back three years, and the government was keen to spruik a different kind of frontline worker, whose presence was keenly felt at the last state election, and whose absence from the latest budget front-page raises questions about the government's priorities going forward. "Labor will fix the ramping crisis." It was an election mandate that brought the party to government in March 2022, and which has since become an annoying itch for MPs forced to defend the government's progress. When the Malinauskas government handed down its first budget in June 2022, a photo of a nurse, paramedic and doctor graced the front-page — a nod to the $2.4 billion in health spending budgeted that year. But in 2025, ramping remains high. Ambulances spent 3,700 hours waiting outside emergency departments in April, a decrease on the month before but still much higher than the worst month under the previous government. Despite the government's latest budget tipping an additional $1.9 billion into the health system over the next five years — $1.7 billion of which is just to address increasing demand — health unions were not too pleased. "This budget is strong on crime but soft on health," Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation CEO Elizabeth Dabars said. "We know that they've put additional investment into health, but the reality is that the demands in the system on nurses and midwives are far too great to endure." Paramedics were equally scathing. "It is inconceivable that we are nine months out from the next election, and the government that promised our community that it would fix the ramping crisis, has not budgeted for any additional ambulance resourcing, or to address ramping and response times," Ambulance Employees Association general secretary Paul Ekkelboom said. "The best this government can do is reframe the narrative away from ramping, and abandon on its commitments to the people of South Australia." But Premier Peter Malinauskas said health remained one of the government's top priorities, and budgeted spending on health eclipsed spending on police. "Let's take nurses for instance: We committed at the last election that we would employ an extra 300 nurses. We've smashed those numbers out of the park by the tune of many, many hundreds," he told ABC News Stateline. "Similarly with doctors, we said we'd employ an extra 100 doctors into our system over the life of our time in government. Last year alone, we increased it by over 300 over and above attrition." When questioned on his progress on "fixing the ramping crisis", Mr Malinauskas pointed to ambulance response times. "They're rolling up to triple-0 calls on time and that is the difference between life and death," he said. "We have made inroads (in fixing the ramping crisis), notwithstanding the fact that clearly, we still would like to see ramping improve. "As those new beds come online that we've invested in so heavily and quite dramatically — and there are hundreds coming online over the next couple of years — we hope it improves." So, if health is still a priority for the government, what has prompted it to deliver a budget so heavily focused on law and order — especially when overall crime rates have dropped across the state? According to Mr Malinauskas, SA Police has a "genuine need" for more resources. "They've seen demand grow not in crime in the traditional sense and how we might think of it, but more through the burden of increasing demands around domestic violence responses … also with call-outs to mental health cases," he said. "We've seen that demand grow and we've also got a growing population. "We haven't had that big uplift in police numbers in our state now for quite a long period of time." "Tough on crime" policies are considered politically popular, but Mr Malinauskas denied crime would become an election focus for his government. "I'd much rather have elections focused on other matters — education for instance, rather than crime — but that doesn't mean there isn't a need that we have a responsibility to address." But that is also the case for the health system, which continues to struggle through ambulance ramping and bed block. Without a "direct ear" to the treasurer, it is yet to be seen whether doctors, nurses and paramedics will receive the same level of attention from Labor in the months leading up to March 2026, as they did ahead of the last state election.
