I can't believe I'm saying this: let's be nicer to the police

Until yesterday, I hadn’t seen the protest up close and personal.

I skirted around the edges, on my way to the office, by the placards and the flags and the vitriol-laced unreality; gawking though I knew I shouldn’t, feeling a faint mix of horror and sickness.

Wellington has always felt comforting, like a friend: a little grey, maybe, but sensible, predictable, middle-of-the-road. But now, in the middle of the road, there were utes and protesters, obstructive and belligerent, as masked police with folded arms watched from footpaths.

It’s now day ten. And we’re all feeling it, all of us who live or work in this town. It’s a kind of desolation.

This image sticks with me. I was at the lights, the corner of Bowen Street and Lambton Quay, hands on the wheel and waiting for the lights to turn green. A police officer crossed in front of me, a man walking with him. I would guess the man was in his 60s. He was a little hunched - a little dishevelled, rolly in hand - and maybe a little disorientated. He wasn’t being arrested, only accompanied somewhere. I can’t know why the police officer was walking with him: to help him, to get him care, to give him a talking to or only directions. I couldn’t guess the officer’s feelings. He was just doing his job.

Maybe imminent events are about to make a fool of me. After all, I’ve felt let down by police before. But right now, I’ve got some sympathy.

Plenty of people are asking, why don’t the police just clear these people out? And how could I disagree? Wellington is one of the more tolerant, thoughtful, level-headed places you will find. But our roads are blocked, our kids are spat on, our businesses sabotaged. This well-heeled town is digging its heels in. We are well ****ing over it.

Here’s what I think. Force is justifiable, but it has to be a last resort. I don’t want police whose go-to is busting heads, even when those heads have so very little in them. I have a bunch of reasons for this.

There is precedent. Whatever tactics the police use in the coming days may be deemed acceptable and used again - irrespective of the protestors’ cause.

There is safety for staff. Some of these people love guns and lynchings and genocide. Some, without doubt, have COVID. They are eating and sleeping in their own excrement. Police are facing a raft of risks.

There is the martyrdom effect. Protesters want nothing more than to provoke a scene. And after ten days of networking, a mingling of conspiracies from all across the motu, they’re well placed to capitalise on any fame.

There is safety for protesters, even though sympathy is hard to find - but values aren’t values if you only hold to them when it’s easy. Yes, some of these people are despicable. Some of them are vulnerable. Some are both: nothing here is simple. Above all, some of them are children.

I don’t believe the police’s reluctance to show force is some kind of special treatment for this cause above others. That’s insulting: Māori and Pasifika officers are looking out on people drawing swastikas on masonry with markers. I just think this stuff is unbelievably hard. Armchair expertise has little more to offer. The actual experts need our support - with our eyes wide open, healthy scepticism - for just a bit longer.

I don’t want leniency or negotiation. I utterly oppose any meeting between protesters and MPs, any legitimacy given to a bankrupt shabby cause. I want these people gone. I want them prosecuted to hell and back. I want them never to return.

But I want us to return. This has made us - our city that feels like a friend - into something unfamiliar, something we’re not. Those people have made their choice, ceded their humanity. Damned if we’ll be goaded into giving up ours.