FTP: Protection or Predation? 3.0 Draft
FTP: When Protection Starts Looking Like Predation 3.0
What this piece is about
This piece is about the point where public protection stops feeling like protection at all.
It is about how police, in my opinion and from my own lived experience, do not simply enforce law. They shape narratives, initiate institutional responses, and then hide behind procedure, policy, and legal protections when the harm they cause needs to be explained away. It is about surveillance without transparency, intimidation dressed up as prevention, and the disturbing reality that the people with the strongest public image of authority can also be the ones most protected from accountability.
It is also about the bitter irony that I once considered joining them.
I once wanted in
Back in 2009, after years of city life and seeing police brutality firsthand, I had seriously considered becoming a cop.
Yes. I know. Embarrassing.
Looking back now, it sounds about as sensible as applying to work inside the very machine I would later spend years trying to understand, document, and expose. But at the time, I still believed that maybe being inside the system meant you might have some chance of changing it. Or at the very least, being one of the decent ones in a structure that seemed to attract far too many people who enjoyed power a little too much.
Then I became pregnant with my second son.
Reality stepped in.
Moving to Wellington for Police College while expecting their dad to hold everything together with the children just did not seem practical. So that path ended before it really began.
Which, in hindsight, was probably one of the better near misses of my life.
NZ’s biggest gang, just with paperwork
In my opinion, New Zealand Police are the country’s biggest gang.
The difference is not necessarily behaviour. The difference is branding.
Gangs wear patches. Police wear uniforms. Gangs protect their own. Police protect their own. Gangs use intimidation, territory, loyalty, silence, and power. Police do too, except theirs comes wrapped in policy manuals, official language, statutory powers, and public relations messaging about safety and trust.
That is what makes it more dangerous.
Because when ordinary people abuse power, we recognise it more quickly. When institutions do it, the public is trained to call it procedure.
And when that procedure causes harm, the same laws that are supposedly there to regulate power often seem to operate as shields around the people using it.
Not shields for the public. Shields for them.
The gas station performance
The night before last, they followed me to a gas station.
A female officer power-walked over to me with the energy of a hyperactive hyena on raspberry. The kind of walk where the legs have already committed but the thoughts are still buffering. Somewhere between launching herself toward me and arriving at my vehicle, she likely realised she could not just approach and question me without an actual lawful reason.
At least not without making it obvious.
And that is the thing. In my experience, they cross lines all the time. But at a gas station there is CCTV. Cameras are inconvenient when pretending to be law abiding.
So instead of acting like someone constrained by legal limits, she did what I have come to expect from people who seem to think a badge is a substitute for justification.
She unlawfully questioned me.
Wanted my name. My address. My licence. The name of the owner of the vehicle.
As though she had simply wandered over under the impression that being curious is the same thing as being entitled.
Meanwhile the male officer stood there with that classic posture of performative authority. Head slightly back. Arms folded. Expression vacant but loaded. He looked like a man trying to hold a carrot between his bum cheeks while still appearing official.
It would have been hilarious if it were not such a perfect visual summary of the problem.
Because that is often what policing looks like from the outside: self-importance, assumptions, posturing, and an expectation that the public should feel instantly compelled to comply simply because they decided an interaction was happening.
Slow roll predator logic
Then tonight, again.
After picking up my teens from a party just down the road, there they were doing the slow roll. Not because I had done anything wrong. Not because there was an obvious lawful issue. Just that creeping, deliberate presence designed to let you know you are being watched.
That behaviour they do where they make themselves visible enough to create pressure, then act as though your discomfort is proof you must be doing something wrong.
They were sitting there in stealth mode, which would have been much more effective if they were not hiding with the confidence of children behind a curtain while their whole torso and legs are still visible.
Waiting to pull me over.
So instead, me and the teens went to Auranga playground.
The boys had a blast.
The police, however, seemed to think they were playing some kind of high-level tactical chess game. Their assumption appeared to be that the second they slipped out of our sight, we would try to leave, and whichever way we went, they would be waiting. One end covered. The other visible from the main road. Predator logic. Box the target in, then pretend the target’s discomfort justifies the hunt.
Except their prediction skills were clearly not quite the elite investigative standard they seemed to believe.
So basically, we jumped in our spaceship and flew home.
(Before anyone gets too excited, I've had to change parts and use some fictional details due to legal reasons)
Just as we were about to pull into the airport of our house, they came speeding toward us with their lights on. We turned our lights off, safely retreated onto private property, and because the property sits on a corner, they carried straight on past us.
Gone.
Outsmarted not by crime, but by the astonishing flaw in assuming everyone else is as stupid as your own plan.
This is the real issue
The problem is not just that these encounters are irritating.
The problem is the mindset underneath them.
It is the assumption that suspicion is enough. That curiosity is authority. That watching someone is neutral. That following someone is normal. That intimidating people is legitimate as long as it can later be dressed up as concern, prevention, discretion, or proactive policing.
That is where the danger sits.
Because once police decide you are a person of interest in their own heads, they do not need evidence first. They just need a story. And if they can start building that story through repeated stops, odd questioning, visible surveillance, or suggestive reporting, then other agencies can absorb that version of events later.
That is how systemic harm works.
Not always through one dramatic event. Often through repeated smaller ones. A stop here. A report there. An assumption written down. A tone used in a note. A “concern” passed on. A pattern implied. A narrative built.
And then suddenly the machine is moving.
Police as the entry point to wider systemic failure
This is one of the clearest themes in my systemic failure project.
Across multiple government agencies, some of the most damaging outcomes I have seen either began with police or were made worse by police involvement. Not because they act alone, but because they often become the gatekeepers of the first official narrative.
They attend. They observe. They interpret. They record. They frame. They refer.
And once that information enters the system, other agencies often treat it as credible by default simply because it came from police.
That is the problem.
Because police are not neutral robots. They are people. People with bias. People with ego. People with assumptions. People with selective perception. People protected by institutional culture and broad public deference.
So when they get it wrong, it does not just stay wrong inside one patrol car.
It spreads.
It enters family harm frameworks. Child protection concerns. Interagency communications. File notes. Court narratives. Risk profiles. Professional assumptions.
A single distorted impression can ripple outward across entire systems.
That is not a small issue. That is structural danger.
The badge and the patch
People are taught to fear gangs because gangs look like danger.
Patches. Tattoos. Reputation. Overt intimidation.
But institutions have their own version of a patch.
Uniforms. Cars. Lights. Logos. Language. Procedure. Legal immunity in practice if not in theory.
That does not make them safer. It makes them harder to challenge.
Because society has been conditioned to see official power as inherently more legitimate, even when the behaviour itself mirrors the same coercive dynamics people are told to fear elsewhere.
Territory. Dominance. Internal loyalty. Punishment for dissent. Narrative control. Protection of members. Retaliation against those who speak up.
The difference is one wears a patch and gets condemned. The other wears a badge and gets believed.
Linear systems do not understand cumulative harm
One of the recurring issues in systemic failure is that institutions are trained to assess harm in linear fragments.
Was there a lawful stop. Was there an offence. Was there a charge. Was there a complaint. Was there proof. Was there a policy breach.
But cumulative harm does not work like that.
Predatory systems do not need one huge event to cause damage. They operate through repetition, atmosphere, pressure, and implied consequence.
The slow roll. The watching. The unnecessary questioning. The repeated presence. The feeling that no matter where you go, they are there, waiting to make your existence feel suspicious.
A linear system says, what is the big deal. A person living inside the pattern knows exactly what the big deal is.
Because it is not one interaction. It is the repeated message underneath it:
We see you. We can follow you. We can interrupt you. We can frame you. And if you complain, good luck proving what we meant.
Why public trust collapses
Authorities love talking about public trust as though trust is some sentimental extra people should hand over automatically.
Trust is not created by uniforms. It is not maintained by slogans. And it is not repaired by internal reviews written in institution-speak.
Trust comes from accountability. From transparency. From clear legal boundaries. From consistent restraint. From officers understanding that power without discipline becomes abuse very quickly.
When people experience police as predatory, performative, entitled, and protected from consequence, trust does not just weaken.
It rots.
And once communities start seeing police not as protectors but as hunters looking for an excuse, the relationship between public and institution becomes fundamentally corrupted.
That is not a public relations problem. That is a legitimacy problem.
The bitter irony
I once considered joining them.
Now I study them.
Not because I am obsessed. Not because I am paranoid. Not because I need something to blame.
Because patterns matter.
And once you have seen enough of them, across enough agencies, with enough people harmed in similar ways, the idea that these are isolated incidents becomes almost insulting.
The failures are too interconnected. The protections are too convenient. The accountability gaps are too consistent.
And the damage is too real.
Final point
I have spent months working on my systemic failure project, documenting accounts of institutional harm across multiple government agencies.
But some of the most harmful failures I have seen, directly and indirectly, have stemmed from New Zealand Police.
Not just because of what they do in a single moment. Because of what their words trigger afterward. Because of how their assumptions travel. Because of how often they appear able to overstep, then retreat behind laws, policies, and internal protections that make ordinary people feel powerless to challenge them.
That is not protection.
That is organised harm wearing a lawful face.
And when the people meant to protect the public start behaving like predators, the real crime is not just the misconduct itself.
It is the system that keeps pretending not to see it.
I don't fear patches near as much as I fear institutions that can behave the same way and still call themselves lawful.
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