Lawyer’s allegation of videotaping ‘nonsense’

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 3

Lawyer’s allegation of videotaping ‘nonsense’

An Auckland lawyer remains convinced that a videotape of her being stripsearched at the Christchurch Central Police Station last year May exist, in spite of police denials. Mrs Lorraine Smith fears a tape was made of the incident in may last year before interviewing defence witnesses due to give evidence in the Lumsden bank robbery trial. She has called for an inquiry after a rival lawyer, Mr Alexander King, told her on Thursday that he had seen the video. The deputy district commander in Christchurch, Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Jamieson, yesterday dismissed the allegations as nonsense and “much ado about nothing.” He emphasised that the station had no equipment to videotape anything in the police cells. There were television monitors in the corridors and the day room but none in. the cells or individual rooms, he said. “I want facts. I don’t think a bit of courtroom banter is fact,” he said. “It is obviously a joke.

The person who made the allegation (that he had seen a video) has since said it was a joke,” Mr Jamieson said. Mrs Smith and the Christchurch lawyer she was working with at the time, Mr David Fitzgibbon, were “thoroughly” searched. Mr Jamieson confirmed that the strip-searching of counsel was an unprecedented move but the trial was surrounded by unprecedented security. The strict security measures taken at the courtrooms were applied at the cells. Journalists were taken yesterday to the medical room in the cell block where the police said Mrs Smith was searched. The search, by one policewoman, had taken about a minute, Mr Jamieson said. Mr Fitzgibbon was searched in another part of the block. Mrs Smith said the matter was humiliating and at best a dangerous joke to make. She could not shake fears that a videotape existed because Mr King had described details of the incident that only she and the searching policewoman

could have known. If Mr King’s allegations were a joke she said she regarded them as a subtle put-down by a man against a woman, which was unprofessional and unnecessary. “If it is a hoax, I will get hold of 'Sandy King myself and he will have to deal with my husband,” she said. She was disappointed with the attitude by the Christchurch police and by the Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer. His office gave a statement that the Attor-ney-General was satisfied that no tape was in existence. Mrs Smith has also written letters to the Minister of Police, Mrs Hercus, the Commissioner of Police, Mr Ken Thompson, and the New Zealand Law Society. “I can only sit and hope now that a proper inquiry will be made if the allegation is proved not to be a hoax,” Mrs Smith said. Mr Fitzgibbon confirmed the sequence of events detailed by Mrs Smith and said he believed her claims were true. ' He said he had never been strip-searched before or since that occasion.

“We had no choice in the matter. Either we acceded to the search or we did not see the man (witness),” he said. The Acting Minister of Police, Mr Caygill, said the matter was serious and was being investigated immediately. He expected a report by Mr Thompson. He said there were two allegations. The first was that someone watched the lawyer while she was being stripsearched. The second was that a videotape of that search was made. “It is clearly possible that the first thing may have' happened. There are monitors and someone may have watched,” he said. Regarding the’ second allegation, it was necessary to find a copy of the videotape. “If a video was made, clearly something very extraordinary has happened, because the equipment to do that is not linked into the monitors,” he said. The allegation amounted to a video camera’s being pointed at a monitor which was a “very extraordinary thing.”