Steven Wallace, a 23-year-old Maori university student, was shot in the early hours of the morning of April 30 on the main street of the small town of Waitara, after being confronted by three cops. He had been breaking windows in the town center, targeting the police station and fire station. For 20 minutes after he was shot, Wallace lay dying on the street, asking for help, while the cops refused to allow anyone to offer him aid or comfort.

The police report concluded that the police officer acted lawfully in self-defense and will not face charges. It claims that Wallace was armed with a baseball bat and that the cop "feared for his life." No on-duty police officer has been prosecuted for shooting a member of the public in New Zealand in the past 60 years.

The report's findings have provoked widespread anger among working people, sparking several protests, and rekindling debate about police racism and the role of the cops. In a television interview, a Waitara Maori leader, Tom Hunt, pointed to the "anger, frustration, and dismay that the police have come out clearly in a way that protects one of their own; that he doesn't get treated the way the rest of us would expect to get treated if we shot someone down in the street."

Sixty young Maori and supporters protested outside the police station in Whangarei August 17, another 50 rallied by police national headquarters in the capital city of Wellington the same day. In Waitara, a small group marched through the town to the police station August 18.

The police presence in Waitara has been massively beefed up in the wake of the report's release, Hunt said in a telephone interview. Nothing has changed in the cop's attitudes to Maori since the controversy surrounding the April shooting, he said, with continued targeting of Maori youth and increasing the carrying of guns by the police. In a recent incident, police investigating a knife attack five miles away burst onto the Waitara marae (Maori meeting place) armed with pistols.

Meanwhile the report's conclusions have been triumphantly welcomed by police, who have even suggested that the cop who shot Wallace may return to duty in the town. Police Association president Gregory O'Connor asserted on television that "police can now know that they can do their job, that they can take the necessary action to protect life and property without having to face the court when it's found they just did their duty."

Steven Wallace's mother, Raewyn Collingwood, responded angrily to attempts to whip up sympathy for the killer cop. "They say that the policeman is human, that he's got a life and it's been put on hold--what about mine? What about my son's? He hasn't got a life anymore," she said. "I just think that if this is our police force, that for anyone with kids--God help them, if the police can get away with this all the time."

The outrage expressed by working people at the findings of the report has again stirred apprehension in ruling circles about the growing lack of credibility of the police force and raised calls for a more convincing "impartial" investigation. The ruling Labour Party's Maori members of parliament called for an urgent review of police systems and processes, while reserving judgment on the case pending a report from a Police Complaints Authority investigation that they urged be "full, open and extensive."

Felicity Coggan is a member of the National Distribution Union