NZ Police: Hypocrisy much?

[balthazarr]

From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...section=justin

Parents alarmed by police donuts

By NZ correspondent Kerri Ritchie for The World Today
Posted Tue Feb 2, 2010 6:16pm AEDT

Two New Zealand police officers have been caught on film driving like hoons at a school fundraising event.

The video of them doing donuts and figure eights on an oval has been posted on YouTube.

Parents are outraged at the risk to children, who they say were lining up for ice-creams nearby and playing on a jumping castle.

But the police minister is backing the officers and describing their actions as "just a bit of fun".

The two officers, who were wearing their uniforms, were helping the Target Road Primary School in Auckland raise money.

For a gold coin donation, the policeman took children for a spin in their patrol cars, complete with sirens and flashing lights.

The incident took place more than a year ago.

Parent David MacGregor was shocked and filmed the cars on his mobile phone.

He has only just worked out how to get the pictures from his phone onto the internet and when they popped up on YouTube a few days ago, the story took off.

"I didn't approach any media. It was just to my own network of friends on the internet and the media picked it up," he said.

"I think it has been blown up a little bit out of proportion."

Mr MacGregor says the police might have meant well, but it could have ended very badly.

"There were no real safety precautions there. There were no barriers. There were no bales or marshals to keep people at a safe distance or anything like that," he said.

"I think the images you see, it is pretty further from the Mr Whippy van than you might imagine but it was very close to the bouncy castle.

"One of my concerns was that it was on grass and it was not a very good surface for traction. The potential for a disaster was there."

The antics are all over New Zealand papers.

Mark Sainsbury, the presenter of the Current Affairs program Close-up, could not resist it for his show.

"Drifting and hooning around a school field, it's the kind of behaviour you would expect from boy racers, not the boys in blue," he said.

Police Inspector Les Paterson, the local area commander, has had a word to the two police officers.

"I am sure these officers went along there with the very, very best of intentions," he said.

"To provide a service to the school and for the children and that the safety of those children was paramount for them.

"I have spoken to both of those officers today and they assure me that they had a safety briefing beforehand, they followed safety procedures and neither of them consider that they drove in a dangerous manner."

Inspector Paterson plans to speak to some other parents to find out if they were concerned about the cars, but he says the police were trying to help their local community.

"We would only do maybe two of those a year. We go by invitation only and I would think the next one probably wouldn't be scheduled until well into this year," he said.

The New Zealand police minister, Judith Collins, has seen the footage but says she is not worried about it.

She wants police to continue to help raise money for schools and believes the kids would have loved it.

I don't know what the safety messages are like over in NZ, or whether 'hooning' has been elevated to the crime of all crimes like it has here (particularly in Vic), but this seems pretty hypocritical to me.

What 'safety procedures' did they follow? Sure, they probably have higher level training than the average joe, but does that excuse the behaviour?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndJKgnIO-HY