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Scoop Feedback: Wallace Case
My congratulations on your article following this travesty of justice. I am no radical socialist, bleeding heart liberal, or Maori activist. I am a WASP, middle class, good income, good education, middle aged regular citizen living on Auckland's North shore. The sort one may expect to say that maybe society was done a favour by this killing. In the long term Wallace may have cost us more than he contributed. But we cannot know that for sure. And in my mind he did not need to be deliberately killed.
I take issue with you only in some areas. I do not think that this was a case of a small town prejudice. I believe it was a blatant case of "you cannot beat the Establishment". The System could not allow the Police Complaints Authority to be proved wrong, to be shown up as a sham, to be proved to have been protecting their own. So it closed ranks. This trial was deliberately set to go before these two JP's, knowing that if it reached the High Court it would be massively more difficult to bend or coerce the Judge or find a way to get it dismissed.
I suspect that these JP's came under significant pressure from the System, and this decision was "suggested" to them, possibly without them even understanding its real ramifications, or what we are now hearing, its faults or even possibly illegality.
Abbot proved that he was a good marksman by putting a bullet into first one arm and then the other. How much easier to hit a leg then! No way did he need to be killed. Even ignoring all the other issues, procedures not followed, waiting for backup, waiting for the dog, keeping back in face of a disturbed offender so as not to provoke him, negotiating from a distance, so on and so on.
With one broken arm and one wounded, even given that he was now provoked beyond all reason, what real power could Wallace have had left to wield that bat? How much longer before the shock of those first two bullets would have brought him to his knees? Once brought down, what possible reason was there to deny him any help to stop the bleeding? The subsequent Coroners verdict that the wound was fatal does not change that. If it had not been he would probably have died anyway.
I believe that Abbot was guilty of the charges brought against him, and I mourn the death of true justice in New Zealand.
Hugger Auckland
Scoop
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