Sir Robert unhappy with court decision

Press, 31 January 1984, Page 2

Sir Robert unhappy with court decision

PA Wellington The Prime Minister said yesterday that a Court decision awarding $l5OO in damages to a man for unlawful arrest and detention by the police at last year’s Waitangi Day celebrations seemed thoroughly bad. Sir Robert Muldoon said the case would clearly be appealed, although the decision to do so was one initially for the police to make. Sir Robert told a postCabinet press conference that the Attorney-General, Mr McLay, believed the decision should be appealed. Mr McLay felt “that if the section of the legislation did not mean what it had always been taken to mean then that section doesn’t mean anything,” Sir Robert said. “You can’t have a section in an act that means nothing. It either means what it has always been taken to mean, or the section has no effect on anything,” he said.

“It seems like a thoroughly bad decision that should be appealed.” In a written judgment delivered last week on a civil case heard in the District Court at Kaikohe, Judge Taylor ruled in favour of Gerard Edmund Reid.

The Judge said that there was no evidence to support the contention that there vyas anything unlawful done by the plaintiff, or, for that matter, any member of the protest group from the time they assembled at the Waitangi Bridge until they were arrested.

He said that the plaintiff on the balance of probabilities was subject to quite unnecessary vigorous attention on his arrest and during his incarceration. The Judge said that to be compelled to remain in a seated bus at times without sufficient seats for all the defendants, with the plaintiffs hands cuffed behind his back for more than four hours, was totally unjustified.

He said there had previously been power to arrest under the Police Offences Act for an anticipated breach of the peace but this was now specifically repealed by the Crimes Act, 1961.

“We are left only with a power to arrest after a past or present breach of the peace has occurred or is occurring.”

The Minister of Police, Mr Couch, said last week that if the police could not use their discretion “then there is something very horribly wrong with the law.”