We all know that anti-male sexism is rife throughout our country including our police. We all know that police routinely discriminate against men and behave as ‘white knights’ serving the interests of women as if royalty. We all knew that ‘police safety orders’ would become yet another tool with which to blame and harm men while condoning violence committed by women. However, that police proudly parade pro-female sexism on their reality tv series ‘Police Ten 7’ shows that they fully expect most New Zealanders to agree with discrimination on the grounds of gender and is an indication of the degree to which feminist privilege has become normal.

Frankly, it’s rare to watch an epsiode of ‘Police Ten 7’ without noticing that police handle males much more harshly and punitively than females. Even the narrator often refers to male suspects in dehumanizing ways (“these animals”, “these violent morons” etc) but you will never hear such hate speech directed at female suspects. Quite often you will see blatant examples of pro-female, anti-male sexism in the way police carry out their work. I decided to share a few notable examples in recent episodes.

On the ‘Police Ten 7’ episode screened on 27/07/14 the first story begins with the police communications to a squad car as follows:

Police HQ: “Informant’s calling from a pay phone reporting a domestic incident. I believe it’s her partner she’s having an argument with. The partner was smashing up the house.”

Narrator: “The woman has fled to some nearby shops, and while Manurewa constables John Ollison and Anoka A Lo look for her, John’s already encountered her partner several times before.”

Officer Ollison then tells us that the partner is well known and there have been (an inaudible number of) incidents with that one person, so… (The so… is not explained for us, but the implication was “so…he’s being violent to her again”. As the rest of the story unfolds one suspects it should have been “so…she’s using the system to get power and control over him again”. But make up your own ending!).

The constables locate the ‘informant’ woman who tells them her partner who lives with her wanted her to drive him somewhere but she refused because there was “no gas in the car”, then he “just started getting angry” and then tried to stop her getting into the car to leave. No mention now of him smashing up the house. The police notice scratches on her neck and tell her “Looks like he grabbed you by the neck” which she does not confirm, then the constable asks “Did you hit him as well?” which she denies having done.

The woman’s young adult son Darcy is standing next to her as she tells her story and the police ask him what happened. He tells them he was at home watching tv when he heard the woman (who we are now told was Leanne) and her partner arguing. He heard the partner ask if she could drop him off, she said no and he said “I’ll take the car”. Darcy then said he looked around the house for his mother who was gone, but that her partner told Darcy that she had tried to whack him with a bat. Officer Ollison asked Darcy if he saw that, but Darcy replied “All I could hear was ‘Get out of my house’ her screaming”. The narrator tells us “There’s clearly different points of view here”, and shortly after that the two constables talk about the claim that Leanne was trying to hit her partner (Tyrone) with a bat. The constables then head off to find Tyrone and the narrator tells us they are going to get his side of the argument. Leanne lets them into the house and they walk around finding nobody home, but also there is no sign or mention of evidence to support the initial claim that Tyrone was smashing up the house. The narrator tells us that police give Leanne and Darcy “strict instructions to call if he returns”.

Narrator: “And sure enough a few hours later he’s back.” The constables are in the car on the way back to the area and Constable A Lo says: “Got a phone call saying he came back to the address and now he’s left on foot. Hopefully we’ll find him and issue him his police safety order.”

We see a brief cameo (almost certainly contrived for the show) of Leanne talking on her phone to police about what direction Tyrone might have walked. We are told that there are ‘multiple units looking for him’ and it doesn’t take long to track Tyrone down. Then Tyrone tells the police, calmly and clearly, “We had planned that I was going to go fishing today but right on the last half hour she decided ‘oh na’. I was a bit brassed off so I was like stay out of my way and stuff cos I’m angry. She goes ‘oh, shut your effing face or I’ll punch your f(beep)ing head’ and I was like ‘Go on then, do it’. Last time she done that she head butted me in the nose and I’ve still got a swollen nose from last week. She went and grabbed the cricket bat and she went to swing at me and I blocked her with my arm. And I went to grab the bat, she wouldn’t let it go and we ended up on the ground and I ended up on top of her trying to get the bat off her.” The constable asks if this is “an ongoing thing between you and her” and Tyrone replies that they are mostly all good. The narrator then informs us “But their unstable history says otherwise so the officers are going to issue a police safety order keeping him away from Leanne, and her home, for two days”, and we see Constable Olllison giving Tyrone the piece of paper with the safety order and tellng him what this means.

So here we see a case in which a woman made allegations against her partner. The allegations actually involved no clear significant violence towards her other than his alleged efforts to prevent her from leaving in the car (that she had just claimed had no gas to take him to catch fish for the household, yet it must have had gas to take her wherever she was planning to go). When she refused to keep to what had been agreed, he informed her he was angry and asked to be left alone. Instead of respecting his request and his effort to communicate his feelings responsibly and safely, she threatened him with violence and tried to assault him with a weapon. But at no stage was there any hint that the police might consider holding the woman responsible for the violence that the evidence suggested she had committed both on this occasion and the week before, or indeed for the untruths that she appeared to have uttered to police from the time of her first contact and throughout this incident. She knew that police will almost always side with her, blame and punish any man at her will and fail to hold her accountable for almost any wrongdoing she commits, and she terrorized her partner accordingly. This was ‘power and control tactics’ supreme with taxpayer-funded support.

The police were initially said to want to hear Tyrone’s ‘side of the argument’ but then before they found him they had already decided to issue him with a safety order, making it clear they were never interested in basing their decisions on any fair hearing of his account. The evidence suggested that Leanne was the one who deserved the safety order. But police issued the order against Tyrone even though he was calm and there was no evidence that he had lied to them but plenty of evidence that Leanne lied. Tyrone was thereby ordered to keep away from Leanne and ‘her home’ for two days (but he lived there so it was as much his home as hers). There appeared to be no young children she was responsible for so no reason that would make her eviction from the house for two days any more onerous for her than for him. The safety order was issued to Tyrone simply because he was male. He will need to find someone’s couch or a spot under a bush somewhere to sleep for at least two nights, and in any subsequent Court proceedings either Family Court or otherwise, the fact he was issued with a police safety order will be brought up as though it is factual evidence of his past violence. His anger at the injustice of the situation, and/or his need to find food and a warm place to sleep for a few days, may well provoke him to carry out some real crime but of course the system’s abuse of him will never be seen as contributing to this.

I will describe other male-abusing discrimination by police as shown proudly on ‘Police Ten 7’ in subsequent posts. Many men have shared experiences here on MENZ Issues of police discrimination against them in favour of females. There has never been an example of similar discrimination against women from what I have seen. Equal before the law, yeah right.