Who wants the army on the streets of New Zealand?

I support some of the policies of the Family Party (those that are a step in the right direction for classical liberalists), but their latest press release in response to the murder of an undercover policeman on a drugs case is inviting abuse of power by the State.

It is written by Richard Lewis, the party leader and a former police sergeant. In part it says:

The solution: It’s time to draw the line in the sand. Drug dealing is the soft-underbelly of organised crime and that’s where law enforcement needs to aim their sights. Give the police what they need to fight the war on gangs and drugs, which is the people, tools and laws to do it. Partnering police with army could be one way to achieve the numbers and the muscle. After all, this is a war we are fighting in our own back yard. And we’re losing badly. [emphasis added]

This is an extremely dangerous methodology at any time, more so at a time when Samuel Dennis, one of the Family Party candidates, is talking about ominous constitutional changes and Helen Clark seizing more power over the police.

Richard, with respect, you are inviting the government to bring in a police state and this is a dangerous and harebrained proposition. Do you really trust politicians like Helen Clark to have the power to deploy the army against citizens? How long before she is using the army to scare people away from marches protesting against the Electoral Finance Act, or to physically break up a supposed unlawful assembly*?

The police are are now controlled by the Prime Minister, so giving the police more “numbers” and “muscle” is giving the PM more numbers and muscle. As for giving police the “tools and laws to do it” they already have those.

As I said my earlier post, the quickest and simplest way to give gangs a kick in the family jewels is to make drugs legal.

**********

*Unlawful assembly is defined in s86 of the Crimes Act and it is a broad definition: all Helen has to do is put a bunch of her commie friends into the area of a march, provoke a bit of push and shove, then get the commies to say that they fear violence from the protestors. Presto, you have an unlawful assembly. Variations on this technique have been used many times over the course of history.