Editorial: Public needs reassuring about police

The appointment of a proper commission of inquiry into criminal sexual allegations against members of the police is a considerable relief. As more women have come forward, and more police officers have been named - two of them district commanders - it became evident that public concern could not be satisfied with less than an independent inquiry of high standing. The choice of two commissioners, Dame Margaret Bazley and Justice Bruce Robertson, is unusual but sensible for a subject that will involve delicate judgments of sexual attitudes and consent.

That is not to suggest that each of the chosen pair alone could not be relied upon to come to fair conclusions, but the dual appointment should preclude the easy accusations of gender bias commonly heard when sexual behaviour is at issue. Dame Margaret, a retired public service head, and Justice Robertson, a High Court judge and president of the Law Commission, have yet to receive their precise terms of reference. The legal considerations are delicate. A commission of inquiry cannot rule on questions of individual criminal guilt, which can properly be established only by a court of law. But this commission will have to review the way the police investigated complaints alleging criminal behaviour against their own in these, and perhaps other, cases.

If it finds those investigations inadequate, it may go as far as to imply that charges ought to have been pressed. Certainly it will form a view as to whether police who handled the women's complaints against other officers followed normal criminal investigating procedure and it can also examine the conduct of internal reviews for the police and the Police Complaints Authority.

The question is: would that range of inquiry be sufficient? The incidents that have lately come to light raise concerns in the minds of many at what they call the "culture" of the police, at least at one station, during the 1980s and early 1990s. "Culture" covers attitudes and behaviour very much wider than actions with a criminal intent. If the police in certain towns not so long ago suffered a collective delusion about their power and their sexual appeal, the police administration needs to know about and deal with it.

The country needs to be assured that if some such culture did prevail at Rotorua and Murupara, it was not a wider malignancy and that it does not persist today. It might be tempting to ascribe the alleged incidents to the attitudes of an era now well gone. But the mid-1980s were not another age. Notions of sexual equality and recognition of women's rights were well established by then. These complaints can quite fairly be judged by the standards of the present.

Many might wish the commission's terms of reference to go even beyond police attitudes to women and range into the area of sexual morality. The officers accused in the 1986 Rotorua incident insist the complainant consented to sex with them as a group. Many people might expect higher standards of behaviour from men of the character they have come to expect in the New Zealand Police.

For the commission to venture into judgments of what might be appropriate behaviour for police in their private lives, however, would be fraught with difficulty. The best that may be hoped is that the very disclosure of these incidents, albeit long after the fact, is a reminder to police officers that the public expects better of them, and that even an unproven allegation of this kind is likely to have unusual consequences. One senior officer, now suspended, had already missed promotion. Others, now out of the force, are suffering the publicity. The inquiry will add to their ordeal. Let us hope it also deals with the women's accusations satisfactorily at last and reassures the public that the reputation of the police overall is reliable.

Above all the commission should see that procedures for dealing with alleged failings in the force are vastly improved.