Lucy Rogers
As readers may recall, in February 2025 the IPCA published a report about my arrest on 25 November 2023, finding that, while I was silently and peacefully counter-protesting an anti-Israel march on Queen Street, police officers wrongfully assaulted me, wrongfully took my sign off me, wrongfully arrested me and then told serious lies about me to justify it. (My sign said SELECTIVE CONDEMNATION OF GENOCIDE IS EVIL.)
Officer Q is Senior Sergeant Vaughan Perry
By far the most serious lies about me were told by Senior Sergeant Vaughan Perry, identified by the IPCA only as “Officer Q”. Perry was the most senior officer present and was also the public order policing commander for the entire police operation monitoring the anti-Israel protest that day.
Perry’s claims
Perry claimed that I was “yelling” at people and that my actions were so extreme that he thought I was “suffering from mental illness”. He claimed that my “behaviour was heightened to a degree of excited delirium” and that he “assessed the threat [to me] as high [due to my] heighten (sic), unpredictable, erratic, belligerent behaviour [I] was demonstrating towards the Palestian (sic) rally attendees”. He also says that he believes that my actions were “deliberate in intent to cause psychological harm to the Palastine (sic) people”.
He was lying
I shall not rehash the facts about my case here, but, suffice it to say, none of this has the slightest basis in fact. I did not say a single word to the protesters (let alone yell) and none of them yelled at me. In fact, hardly any of them even took any notice of me. If you would like to see what really happened, you can see footage here:
And here:
(I recommend watching both for the full picture. The second one starts at 4.16.) The February 2025 IPCA report found that he “could not have believed” that I was screaming at people or going berserk.
Perry’s got previous
It appears this is not the first time Perry has gotten away with serious misconduct. In 2016, Perry and his mate Inspector Hurimoana Dennis were charged with kidnapping someone while on duty. According to the IPCA report about the case, the subject of the kidnapping was a teenager in a sexual relationship with an underage girl that his family disapproved of. His family knew Dennis in a personal capacity and asked him to intervene to separate the young couple.
Perry was found not guilty by a jury, but guilty by the IPCA
Dennis and Perry were found not guilty by a jury on the criminal standard of proof, i.e., beyond reasonable doubt. However, the IPCA found on the balance of probabilities that the pair of them put Mr Z through a mock arrest and threatened him with charges of statutory rape (thus facing potentially years in prison) unless he consented to move to Australia, away from his girlfriend.
Perry’s story
Perry denies being aware that Mr Z did not consent to being taken into the cells in advance and run through a mock arrest. Perry told the IPCA that he “understood from [his] discussion with Inspector Dennis that [Z’s] visit was by consent”. The IPCA report says, however, that “it is difficult to see how Sergeant Perry would have ‘understood’ that Z had consented before Z arrived in the custody unit”. This is litigation-speak for ‘Sergeant Perry is probably lying.’
The police’s investigation into Perry was atrocious
The way that the New Zealand Police dealt with all of this is shocking. According to the IPCA, the employment investigation into Perry’s actions was “completed […] within one week”. The IPCA says that it “incorrectly applied mitigating factors (such as the stress of being prosecuted) to the finding regarding Sergeant Perry’s level of misconduct, rather than to the sanction he would receive”.
Perry escaped scot free
The only consequence Perry ever faced was an “expectation-setting” conversation on 7 December 2017. (Not only that, but he subsequently appears to have received a promotion to senior sergeant and commander of the AOS.) The IPCA stated that in its view “this outcome did not reflect the severity of Sergeant Perry’s misconduct, which was significant enough for police to prosecute him”. The IPCA also commented that it was strange that another officer who was less culpable than Perry was given a more severe disciplinary sanction.
Perry sued the IPCA
Following this, Perry and Dennis argued that tikanga Māori justified unconventional tactics in keeping young Māori out of the justice system and accordingly laid a complaint to the Human Rights Commission about the IPCA’s findings, accusing it of racism for its failure to respect tikanga. I mention in passing that this should tell you everything you need to know about the IPCA’s supposed relationship with crooked cops: as I have said before, contrary to popular belief, they are not drinking buddies. In fact, my experience has been that the IPCA are of outstanding integrity.
Dennis made excuses
Dennis then told the media, “My actions, or my involvement with this investigation and this issue, can best be described as practicable commonsense, big picture policing, with a bit of heart.” He said, “The only thing that Vaughan and I have done wrong is be very proud Māori officers – who were quite vocal about the number of Māori men coming into the judicial system.” He also said, “The only other thing we’ve done wrong is we just care too much.”
Dennis received the NZOM
I add in closing that I was speechless to discover that in 2022, Dennis received the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and the community, despite the fact that the incident with Mr Z was, according to the IPCA, by no means the only example of him engaging in acts of very serious misconduct. Other examples included improper influence over the outcome of a criminal investigation including Dennis’ son and inappropriately using Dennis’ rank as an inspector to influence whether a more junior officer issued him with a speeding ticket.
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