Carry on crims – the court decrees cops can’t use candid camera to film your crooked capers

And if the cops are filming us, they won 't be able to use the evidence in court.

Gotta tell you Alf is with the NZ Police Assoication, when it says an urgent law change is needed to allow Police to continue to act against drug dealers and organised crime.

The call comes after the Supreme Court’s ruling that Police have no legal authority to use video surveillance to gather evidence.

This lack of “legal” authority led to the withdrawal of several charges laid in relation to Operation Eight.

This is more than just a shame. It’s a bloody disgrace.

Alf was always very fond of Candid Camera and similar programmes, which used secretly located cameras.

Their stunts often caught people doing the things that people do if they think they are not being watched.

And that’s the bloody point.

There’s some irony in cop attacker’s jail sentence – but much more irony was called for

Yep, irony perhaps is an apt word.

A teenager who was jailed yesterday had tried to kill Senior Constable Bruce Mellor with a machete – says his sister – because he was scared of going to jail.

Debra Graham, 23, said it was sad and ironic her 18-year-old brother would now spend up to eight years and three months behind bars because of the vicious attack.

Sad be buggered. And the irony could have been hugely amplified.

There’s the small matter of cops shooting innocent bystanders but hey – we’ll get some bad buggers, too

Make our day, Crusher, and recruit this bloke into the force.

Good for you, Alf told Crusher last night on learning she supports equipping all police vehicles with lockboxes for firearms.

But he also urged her to go further.

Several cops have been shot by bad buggers over the years.

The Herald puts figures on it: Nine police officers have been shot in the past two years, two fatally.

The shooting of Senior Constable Bruce Lamb and Constable Mitchel Alatalo during a routine callout in Christchurch in July obviously struck a raw nerve with Crusher (who has lots of raw nerves and is easily stung into action).

Sharples and Black Power: forget about the drugs, it’s the tikanga that matters

Alf is disappointed but by no means surprised that Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples has been trying to spare a Black Power stronghold from demolition.

The gang might be a tad cavalier, in the law and order department, with a regrettable inclination to peddle drugs and what-have-you.

But hey, the Maori Party is unabashedly about promoting things Maori and there is bound to come a point where being Maori is more important than being law-abiding.

It happened – for example – with those blokes who roughed up the PM at Waitangi last year, and Hone Harawira proudly spoke on their behalf to tell us what splendid people they were and how we had to understand their grievances.

Fair enough – we’ll scrap the tasers if we can deal with bad buggers as they do in Morocco and Algeria

Alf was jolted from his slumbers by a Radio NZ report about tasers.

Nope. It wasn’t that some bad bastard had been zapped by one during a weekend in which our police officers have run into more violent stuff from drunken young people.

This time, the Government has been zapped.

The United Nations was reported to be urging the New Zealand Government to consider giving up the use of tasers.

Actually, it turns out that just one laughable bit of the UN, its UN Human Rights Committee, is doing the urging.

The committee has “18 independent experts who are persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights.”

The countries from whence they come include great upholders of civil liberties and human rights such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritius, Colombia and Egypt.

Hurrah: Govt to put more cops on the beat

Crusher Collins is putting more cops on the beat – something the public has been demanding for years.

We can be sure she will point this out when – as seems inevitable to the well-seasoned Alf – Labour takes issue with plans to reduce the Police car fleet.

The Police Commissioner’s Office has started warning affected units that part of the fleet is to be axed as a cost-cutting measure, a source told the Herald yesterday.

The directive had “come from the top” and was “non-negotiable”.

The Herald understands it could mean as much as 10 per cent of the fleet being taken off the nation’s roads.