Accountability - Yeah Right

Some incredibly interesting things happened at Friday's anti-Bypass protest. I for one, have a number of questions. 1. Who instructed the Police to keep the protest out of Tonks Ave? 2. How come the Police gave the protestors no advice as to why they were not allowed in Tonks Ave and just chose to set up a barricade? 3. How come the Police are doing private security work for Transit? 4. How come the Police chose to push the media out of the way? 5. How come the only people arrested were members of the media? (The Police stament can be found here) 6. How come TV3 didn't show the footage on the news? They were given three sets of footage from different positions. 7. How come City Council staff are participating in law enforcement with no identification? 8. As a member of the public, what rights do I have to get these questions answered? There was obviously a strategy behind the Police response on Friday. They had made assumptions about what the protesters were going to do and took unneccesary heavy-handed action to prevent public opposition to this project. I want assurances that I can safely go out and demonstrate. There were more police than protestors on Friday and the majority of them had their identification covered up. For an organisation that is doing its damndest to increase public confidence at the moment, this is a crap way of going about it.