KEY POINTS:
Mayor to Rickards: Stay away - Herald Headline
Rickards to Mayor: Where would you suggest? Hamburg?
At which point the Auckland City Council Choir (also known as The Junquet Chorale) spontaneously performs its Festival special, a stirring new version of I Do Like To Be Beside The
Seaside:
Oh, I do like to visit Sister Cities
And I do like to play the V.I.P.
And it must be Business Class
Where i plonk my Council
$%&*
When you're pay-ing for me ... Cha Cha Cha
Well, it's been that kind of week, really.
Business Class saints slagging sorry old sinners; Corrections patting itself on the back; the Parole Board being exonerated. Life is good.
Almost everybody - except Clint - is off the hook and in the clear.
The internal report on Corrections by Corrections, for example, makes it clear the Parole Board did an almost splendid job and its members can, if they wish, walk the hills of Wainuiomata with their heads held high.
The only slight mistake they made was "not taking into account" reports of three assaults by Burton on other prisoners and two threats of "hits" on prison staff.
"It does not appear that these allegations are able to be tested due to informants refusing to give evidence ... " said the Parole Board, demonstrating a stunning appreciation of how prisons work.
But, having chosen to ignore any "unsubstantiated" information identifying less than "impeccable" behaviour, the Board's decision to release Graeme Burton was, apparently, entirely "reasonable".
Translation: After doing something totally dumb, everything else made perfect sense!!! So that's all right, then.
"There's no blood on my hands," said Mr Matthews from Corrections. No, of course there isn't, Barry. And even if there was, we couldn't see it for ink.
Speaking of which, it seems the rozzers had a spot of bother in that department, too - although their complaint was more about paperwork than ink itself.
In a submission to the inquiry, Mr G Burton (unable to survive on a Student Allowance) says he "started offending - taxing the criminals in the city, establishing myself as the predominant gangster in the Wellington region".
Someone obviously took this thinly veiled boast seriously because "the police helicopter followed me for two days".
Then, after accompanying "workmates to collect money ... the police pulled us up at Happy Valley Tip and arrested the driver for not having a licence and arrested the other person for demanding with menaces".
Gosh! Thank goodness somebody got arrested, even if it wasn't Mr Burton.
"The detective told me he knew what I'd been up to. He mentioned that I'd allegedly broken someone's legs and been robbing and taxing drug dealers in the city.
"The detective said; 'We want you to stop offending in our city - go and do another city, we don't want the paperwork when you kill someone'."
And fair enough too. They probably had heaps already with Operation Austin and all.
Then again, when you discover the cops had actually collared Graeme Burton but decided not to arrest him, you can't help but think, "Oh, damn! If only he'd been speeding!!"
(There'll be those who experienced a similar reaction when they saw the Herald headline: BURTON: I WAS GUTTED I WASN'T KILLED and thought, if only momentarily, "So were we".)
Which leaves only Mr Rickards, who hasn't been killed but is surely dead in the water.
This Saul can never be Paul. There is no road to Damascus for him. The Waikato District Commander can get his job back after being found Not Guilty of rape but Mr Rickards will not.
It's okay, apparently, if comfort-loving Sister City councillors fund their Business Class jaunts with other people's money, and the Corrections Department absolves itself, and the Police can't be bothered to arrest "the predominant gangster in the Wellington region" - or even deploying a surveillance squad to find him - because it's all too inconvenient.
But, according to Auckland's Mayor, Mr Rickards' conduct 25 years ago demonstrates a standard of behaviour that is "unacceptable" and "unbecoming". No past tense there. It is unacceptable.
Clint Rickards may have been acquitted - but only by a jury. Twice. After (in one case at least) hearing the testimony of accuser and accused.
But they didn't hear Mr Hubbard or the Prime Minister. She's certain whatever happened all those years ago wasn't consensual. The women were younger. The men were older. And in uniform. Case closed.
No matter that the Police knew about this in 1994 and considered it such "disgraceful conduct" that they subsequently promoted Mr Rickards four times, because things have changed.
Close as they are to the Beehive, his commanders have seen the light and are now quite happy to (disgracefully?) leak any bit of dirt (Sex on car bonnet - Rickards faces new claim - Herald, March 3) that might blacken his reputation.
A Cabinet Minister facing historic allegations of assault can be reinstated after arguing that times were different then and he is a changed man now, but there'll be no such redemption for Clint.
Perhaps we expect a higher standard of our Police than we do of our Cabinet Ministers.
Perhaps forgiveness, like morality, is selective.
Perhaps, in the end, we should be thankful that, even if they don't always get their man (as Mr Burton can attest) it sure looks like the cops are going to this time!!!!
