Venu Menon
Wellington, April 27, 2023
The review by the Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that the police exercised professionalism and restraint while ending the illegal occupation of Parliament grounds by anti-vaccine mandate protestors on 2 March 2022.
Authority Chair Judge Colin Doherty said frontline officers faced “extreme provocation and violent behaviour” from some of the protestors and described the occupation as “a level of public disorder rarely seen in New Zealand.”
The review covers the police response from the time when car-borne protestors converged on Parliament through to the final police operation to clear the grounds of Parliament, Victoria University campus, St. Paul’s Cathedral and surrounding streets.
“Overall, they [police]served the public of New Zealand well,” Judge Doherty observed.
The protest, which commenced on 8 February 2022, saw protestors arriving to Parliament in convoys similar to convoys in Australia and Canada around that time.
The Authority found that the police had no traffic management plan in place to forestall the disruption caused by the convoys. However, it also notes having such a plan would not “necessarily have changed the path of the protest.”
The Speaker closed Parliament grounds after several hundred protestors had set up tents and structures there as well as on Victoria University’s Pipitea campus.
Once the protestors became trespassers, police decided to take action to end the occupation.
The Authority found that the decision to end the occupation was made by the Commissioner independent of political pressure.
However, the Authority was critical of the police operation to remove protestors from the Parliament grounds on February 10. While arresting 108 trespassers, police failed to “provide all protestors with the required warnings, in the manner required by the Trespass Act 1980, that they must leave the parliament grounds.”
The arrest process and recording of evidence was deficient, the Authority noted. As a result, many charges against the protestors were later withdrawn.
The Authority lauded the police for adopting the right approach of focusing on containing the protest and maintaining law and order between 11 February 2022 and 1 March 2022, while planning for a larger operation to end the illegal occupation.
The police “needed time to plan and to marshal the required resources.”
The Authority found that the “demands of day-to-day policing and staff shortages from Covid-19 made it difficult for Wellington District Police to do the necessary planning, although they received assistance from 15 February when a national operation was established at Police National Headquarters.”
The Authority recreated the scenario leading up to the final police operation to end the occupation on 2 March 2022, citing strong resistance from the protestors who lit fires and threw projectiles such as “a Molotov cocktail, bricks, paving stones, fireworks, poles, bottles, a knife” at the police.
By late in the day the protest had degenerated into a riot, the Authority notes.
The Authority justified the tactics used by the police, which included “skirmish lines, shields, pushing and striking, pepper spray, batons, weapons of opportunity (fire extinguishers, fire hoses and paving bricks), sponge rounds and deflating vehicle tyres.”
The Authority said police were also justified in carrying firearms (though none were used on the day).
The Authority recommended that police needed to wear hard body armour in operations of this kind in future.
The Authority identified inadequacies in the current law in the areas of trespass, the arresting process and dealing with properties left behind by trespassers.
The IPCA review coincides with the first anniversary of the Parliament protest and occupation.
This reporter was present on the frontline on March 2 a year ago where a pitched battle broke out between protestors and police at the intersection of Bunny and Featherston streets in Wellington. Police used pepper spray as protestors stormed the barricades that separated them from the law enforcers. By evening, the police had cleared the Parliament grounds.
Since then, the protestors have re-surfaced under different banners.
A month-and-a-half after the March 2 Parliament occupation, protestors gathered at different locations throughout Central Wellington as part of a two-week campaign against the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act 2020, which they saw as a coercive piece of legislation.
With the vaccine mandates going out of vogue, the protestors who flocked to the Parliament grounds then turned their attention to broader issues such as the government’s Covid -19 policy, the science behind vaccinations and against the authority of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The anti-vaccine protest movement became fragmented with Bishop Brian Tamaki of the Destiny Church leading a peaceful protest march to Parliament. The routes to Parliament were blocked by police in anticipation of trouble, but none ensued.
The Covid-19 response that fuelled the original Parliament protest a year ago has since faded, but the memory of the 23-day siege still lingers as a grim footnote of contemporary times.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington.
