Tony Veitch... Police ties to ex-partner

What an odd attitude from the cops. After the phone message left by the police which was completely out of line some months ago now this..

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2282893/Cops-ties-to-Veitchs-ex-cause-for-concern

Now, I'm not so worried about it per se, since they've addressed it - but this comment here which seems surprising:


I would have thought the reason to do it was proper, impartial investigative reasons and not that the media had found out. Or is the media finding stuff out the benchmark the police set for themselves?

I agree

it's fairly obvious that this detective could be perceived to be biased, or lack impartiality

should have happened sooner

They claim it went through an internal process to check for conflicts of interest and was found not to be one. So either that process is robust enough and would withstand media scrutiny, or not.

Although I have some sympathy for the public service who get hung out to dry by gotcha media regardless of the realities underpinning it - I imagine this is what we're seeing here.

I imagine it's got something to do with how police define conflict of interest too

Conflict of interest in this sort of thing includes whether outsiders would consider it to be too close for comfort - which in this case is an obvious 'yes'. It is unacceptable that a conflict of interest is disclosed and acted on because the media found out. They have their head firmly screwed on backwards if that is their attitude to the issue. It would only encourage the hushing-up of things. Then again, Police culture in NZ is not exactly one of openness at the best of times so I'm not surprised really.

(this is all assuming the person who commented for the police is correct)