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4 February 2007

MICHAEL LAWS
COLUMNIST

A weekly column published in the ‘Sunday Star-Times'

IN CONTEMPT

One of the worst things about Telecom’s Caller ID function is that it always fails you when you most need it.

It is outstanding in identifying supplicant teenagers begging for money. Partners who want to exceed the credit limit to purchase their latest extravagance, or acquaintances wanting reciprocal child-minding rights. At which point you either choose to answer the ‘phone or not. Mostly, or not.

But it is absolutely hopeless with the true nasties of this post-modern world. Especially god-botherers, psychotic constituents and the media. As often as not, all the same person.

All the genuinely distasteful calls that you get these days are always marked ‘caller ID withheld’. Mostly telemarketers or charitable agencies on the pull. You give $10 to Red Cross for tsunami relief and they think they have an easy mark for life.

So to protect myself I’ve programmed my cellphone with as many likely callers as possible. Then I can ignore them.

Unfortunately, the ‘New Zealand Herald’ is not one of those programmed numbers. Meaning my idiot reflex flashed on the moment that my mystery caller rang. And, like most Kiwis, I instinctively want to know the unknown. Who were they, and what did they want?

“Mr Laws?” a female voice trilled.

Which was warning enough. When anyone addresses you by both honorific and surname then some great evil is always at hand. I should have lied, but I didn’t.

“Yes?”

At which point the young lady identified herself as a journo and wanted to know if I’d been arrested yet. It was an interesting derivation on the old have-you-stopping-beating-your-wife enquiry, but it had its effect.

“Wha-at?”

She then informed me, that Police sources had informed her, that I was to be served with a summons for contempt of court. Now, I must admit to having been contemptuous of courts on many occasions but I did not realise that this was necessarily an offence. It was, she added, because I’d breached a suppression order arising from the trial of former Police prosecutor Graeme Capill.

I was so startled that I told her the truth. Something you never do to journos for fear of being misquoted and made a liar. How could the Police charge me for something I’d never done, on an issue they’d never talked to me about? Was she sure of her source? Definitely.

Ten days have now passed and I’ve still not been summonsed. Still not been questioned by an inquiring officer, still not been questioned. If it wasn’t for the fact that a fellow radio announcer was charged this week, with the same offence, I might think that I had been hoaxed. I was going to be getting mine, he told me with those narrowed eyes that indicate the desire to share misery. And could I make less of a fuss, please. They might take pity and accept his contrition.

Because I’m not contrite.

Primarily, because I didn’t identify any of the victims of Graeme Capill’s depravity. I’ve never been told nor informed who they were. However, I do read newspapers and watch TV. Thus the media reports – skirting the suppression orders - sketched sufficient of a picture that even the rudest of intelligences could connect the dots. Any Police action will simply confirm my suspicion and, ironically, confirm their identity. As if the country doesn’t already know.

So why the Police action? Why the press leak? One could be paranoid and suggest that it was not wholly unconnected with my criticism of the Police handling of the Jayden Headley affair. For putting up a cash reward and commenting upon the appalling ineffectiveness of our boys in blue.

Others in the media have also made the connection between criticisms of Police and sudden contempt summons. The editors of ‘Hawke’s Bay Today’ and the Christchurch ‘Press’ have voiced and experienced such links in the past year or so. I’d like to think they’re wrong but human nature is a funny thing.

The greater irony though is that I am supposed to be a prosecution witness in another contempt hearing relating to the trial of former Police superintendent Steve Rickards and his colleagues Brad Shipton and Greg Schollum. Apparently, a chap had admitted, on my radio programme, to distributing pamphlets that dealt with suppressed items from that case.

Now it may be that the Police have reconsidered their precipitate action. Or that NCEA are responsible for their postal services so some dumb kid in Christchurch has scribbled over their order. Or that they’re too busy chasing parolees and speeding mums.

So I’ll say only this. That the Police are truly wonderful people – the SPCA for humanity. That district court judges are the most intelligent and attractive people in the universe. And that I’d prefer not to spend the next six months in a cell with a guy named Bubba who is off his medication and wants me to be his bitch.

Failing that, I’ll kidnap some kid involved in a custody case and head north. That way I’m guaranteed never to be found.

ENDS