Police Minister's Ship Going Down With Sinking Rats

MEDIA RELEASE FROM INVESTIGATE MAGAZINE

17 MAY 2007

Police Minister Annette King has gone heavily into bat for what now appears to be one of the most bent police forces in the Southern Hemisphere, but it's already looking shaky.

Investigate editor Ian Wishart spent much of Wednesday talking to a number of police sources before putting a list of questions to Police Commissioner Howard Broad late Wednesday for his comment before they are released.

"Howard Broad is a drunkard. He has an alcohol problem and engages in what fellow officers have described to the magazine as 'offensive behaviour' and on the basis of the evidence now given to Investigate by Broad's colleagues, we believe he is unfit for the job. We are awaiting Broad's response to this and a range of fresh information.

"I had not expected to be looking into Howard Broad's problems in such detail," said Wishart, "but the media's concentration on Broad and refusal to examine more serious allegations in the magazine has actually backfired on the Commissioner: more police have come forward to us with stories about Broad's many indiscretions while stationed around the country.

"While Annette King attacked Wayne Idour in Parliament this afternoon over flashes of porn scenes cut into a training tape by Dunedin's police photography unit," senior police sources revealed to Investigate that Police College staff routinely screened porn and a bestiality movie called "Animal Farm" for recruits in the mid-1970s, the time that Howard Broad graduated. This too was apparently for "training" purposes and happened under the supervision of Senior Sergeant Evan Jordan, apparently with the approval of Police National Headquarters."

Former Detective Sergeant Tom Lewis has also cast fresh doubt on the versions of the bestiality screening put forward by Howard Broad.

Speaking from Australia, Lewis has told Investigate that the idea of 100 police officers and their mates holding a fundraiser in 1981 by screening "old Ranfurly Shield games" on a projector is a fabrication.

Lewis says film footage of old Ranfurly Shield matches did not exist on home movie format in 1981, and the idea that 100 cops had gathered to watch a fellow policeman's shaky home movie of an entire game is ludicrous.

He's told Investigate he was aware of a number of similar fundraisers, and the drawcard was usually the latest pornographic movies seized by police. Like Wayne Idour, he says they were not functions normally attended by women.

He recalls on one occasion two of his junior staff, Gordon Hunter and Jim Stacey, discussing the porn movies they'd viewed at a police rugby fundraiser, and he says that may have been the one at Howard Broad's house.

Lewis also scoffs at former Detective Peter Gibbons' claim that everyone left the room when the movie came on.

"Is he expecting people to believe that a hundred people suddenly crammed into Howard Broad's kitchen, and that Broad then asked Gibbons and Gordon Hunter to tell the one person in the lounge to turn the movie off, using his prime authority as the householder, but that the person in the lounge refused and neither Howard Broad nor Peter Gibbons did anything? That's almost an even bigger indictment on their policing and decision making ability than watching the bestiality movie in the first place!"

It is also, says Lewis, impossible to believe.

"In my view Peter Gibbons has a vested interest. He's a close mate of Broad's, and he also gets a lot of his private detective work from Dunedin Police. So it's in Gibbons' best interests to support the police on this," opines Lewis.

Wayne Idour's recollection is that the party was in fact Broad's going away party in the mid 80s, and Lewis also remembers Broad's impending promotion to Christchurch just before Lewis quit in 1986.

"If it wasn't 1981, but in fact 85 or early 86, then Broad would have been approaching 30 years of age."

Investigate's editor Ian Wishart says significant new information has come to light about Broad and other members of his management team at Police National Headquarters, information that should be put before a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Police Corruption.

Comments

[ZenTiger]

Oops, sorry about the typo on "Nicholas"

[ian]

PB...I appreciate the tenor of your queries...so let me try and explain.

Yes, there is other corroborating evidence for some of these events in the article, and of course bucketloads more that has poured in since about other things as recently as last year.

In talking to many of these people, I explained (and often they explained to me) that the ONLY way there would be a fair and honest hearing would be an RCoI.

Cops have told me, for instance, that it is quite common in internal complaints, and even PCA investigations, for either the same officer complained about or a close friend to be assigned the role of "investigating" the complaint. Even to this day.

My sources are not stupid. They don't intend to hang themselves out to dry for a Quioxtic windmill tilt. They want a proper, honest investigation.

I know many MPs quite well, including some of the bulldogs who could specialise in this sort of thing. But, and it is a significant 'but', I have been a parliamentary "Sir Humphrey" spin doctor. I know what I'm up against.

The Government is no more going to listen to an MP than they are me, and any member of the House can veto the tabling of a document (I lived through the Winebox, remember).

Then, to add to the likely ineffectiveness of this, I would be accused of playing politics, not journalism, and the proof would be my liaison with whichever MP ran with it.

However, I'll give your advice some consideration. Like you, I tire of the drip feed. There are a couple more bullets to fire in the near future but then I agree a more strategic approach is required.

And to those who asked earlier, yes sometimes I do sail close to the wind, and occasionally I do make a bad call. But I submit myself to the scrutiny of my advisors and the blogosphere, deliberately to keep me in touch with reality.

I'm sorry if sometimes the reason for doing something does not seem clear.

As I said to James Sleep the other day, I would be a raving idiot not to welcome my opponents on this blog, because not everything they say is wrong, and not everything I say is right. But only by testing these things in the crucible of debate can I get a better feel for the correct approach.

[carol]

I don't agree with suggestion that this case may already be dying, even with news of Samoan president death, our own budget and release of David Bain.

Here is some press from Nelson:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelsonmail/4063021a6508.html

The last sentence is not very kind to Investigate Magazine Ian. Maybe it would be best to move onto other stories now as suggested already.

[Rumpole]

I just wonder if opposition MPs have skeletons the police have a file on and are anxious for the police to keep the file in a locked cabinet - no pun intended