KEY POINTS:
Former assistant police commissioner Clint Rickards would presumably want his stance in the final stages of his career to be interpreted as a sign of his never-say-die mentality and his courage under fire. It won't be.
Even as the report of the Independent Police Conduct Authority was being
prepared for public release, Rickards - whose complaints about the conduct of the investigation were brushed aside with a good deal more gentleness than they deserved - was seeking to bolster his case for exculpation and public forgiveness.
He did so in ways that can be most charitably described as disingenuous. First, he verbally attacked - in terms that we will not dignify with repetition here - Louise Nicholas, whose persistent demonstration of real courage rightly earned her the title of the New Zealand Herald's New Zealander of the Year.
The record will always show that Rickards, along with Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum, were acquitted on charges of raping Nicholas.
But no one can be left in any doubt that a young woman was appallingly treated by men who must have known what they were doing was a grossly reprehensible abuse of power. For Rickards to launch such a graceless attack on a woman he so cruelly wronged only demonstrated the deep level of denial he is in about the damage he has done to her - and to the police force whose reputation he has tarnished.
Adding further insult to injury, in the same radio interview, Rickards thanked leading Maori figures for the support they had shown him during the years of court action and public scrutiny.
The timing of that expression of thanks, which could have been made in any of the 10 months since the delivery of the jury verdict in the rape trial, invites the opinion that Rickards was seeking to blunten the criticism that he knew was coming his way in the IPCA report.
It also - and this is much worse - was a cynical misrepresentation of the "support" he had enjoyed, and a betrayal of the spirit in which it was offered. Rickards knows - or should know - that the Maori concept of tautoko, a concept inadequately rendered in English as "support" - is very different from what pakeha understand by that term. Specifically, and crucially, it does not imply an endorsement of the actions of the person being supported.
As Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples, one of those that Rickards thanked, put it, "supporting Maori is what Maori do".
Any intelligent reading of what these Maori leaders were doing would not baldly describe it as support: it comes much closer to what pakeha mean when they say, of a loved one, "I know he has done wrong and I don't for one moment endorse his actions, but I love him for all that and I will not turn my back on him".
Rickards, though, was happy to let the ambiguity work to his advantage and, in the process, turn the heat onto those who had offered him the hand of friendship.
The only honourable aspect of the entire saga with which Rickards' name will be forever associated is the conduct of Operation Austin, which resulted in the charges against him and which he called "a shambles" that he "would have been ashamed to have led".
The public did not need Justice Lowell Goddard to tell them that the "groundbreaking" operation was no such thing - but it is good that she did. It gives the official seal of approval to the fearless, exhaustive and entirely professional conduct of that team.
It is regrettable that Rickards' resignation was accepted on the eve of disciplinary proceedings that seemed likely to have resulted in his dismissal.
It smacked distastefully of a deal done behind closed doors, and an official reluctance to open the books on the past.
But the resignation does give Rickards the chance to scurry from view and maintain the silence his position demands.
He should take that chance.
