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The commissioner of police, Peter Marshall, is defending the decision to exclude police iwi liaison officers from the planning of the 2007 Tuhoe raids.
The Independent Police Complaints Authority has slammed the way police set up blockades and detained people in the Ruatoki valley, but considered there was a case for leaving some of its most experienced Māori staff out of the loop.
Mr Marshall says the team investigating alleged military style training camps in Te Urewera, thought it would be counter-productive to involve the liaison officers.
"Using the old adage, whether they are the poacher or the gamekeeper – they are either on one side of it or the other. They would have been compromised in terms of 'why didn't you give us a warning this was happening or why didn't you tell us what was happening? So in hindsight, six years after the event, the decision was made with the best interest of those iwi liaison officers at heart," he says.
Mr Marshall says while he appreciates people caught up in the road blocks were traumatised, such trauma is an unavoidable part of major investigations.
Copyright © 2013, Uma Broadcasting Ltd
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