Debunked: 1,433 Deaths Caused by New Zealand Police Since 1990

MikeG

Senior Member.
This appeared recently on Vinny Eastwood’s Facebook site.

11828581_10153134021757879_8970821312236254035_n.jpg

Eastwood is claiming a significant number of New Zealanders have died at the hands of police since
1990, 1,433 to be exact.

Update: The figure of 1,433 deaths relates to deaths in police custody in England and Wales.

There is a legitimate discussion to be had about deaths suffered by people who are in police custody or simply encountering police. That is true here in the United States and around the world.

Unfortunately, many CT believers have hijacked the conversation as a means to demonstrate the dangers of the police state and its lack of public accountability.


I have gained a gist of Eastwood in previous threads.

https://www.metabunk.org/sandy-evan-oswald-weather-warfare.t1609/#post-44321


That said, I was interested in finding out just how many people have died “following contact” with New Zealand police. The term itself is ambiguous, so I made the search relatively broad.

I found a 2012 report issued by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA). According to the report, 27 civilians died in police custody between 2000 and 2010.

An additional source of fatalities was car chases. Between 2003 and 2008, 24 people died in this manner.

None of these numbers comes close to Eastwood’s claims, so I looked elsewhere.


NGO’s like Amnesty International make no mention of police violence in recent reporting.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-new-zealand-2013

I could not find any records of problems with police behavior in the Amnesty archives or on the Human Rights Watch website.


So, my question to Vinny Eastwood via Facebook and his own website was: where did he get 1433 deaths? He responded today and told me his information came from a “TV host/presenter” in Poland who goes by the name of Paul Marian Heinrich. It was not much of an answer.



Beyond the obvious possibility that Eastwood is simply exaggerating for effect, I would appreciate some help either finding out the source of those 1,433 claimed deaths or filling in the gaps between 1990-2000 and after 2010.


Many thanks.
 

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The creator of that meme didn't even bother to get the name right - the New Zealand Police does not have a 'Royal' designation.
 
Other than Paul Marian Heinrich's own social media profiles, I can find no mention of his being a TV presenter anywhere. There are also no photos or videos of him on TV, although there are videos of him 'broadcasting' from what appears to be his bedroom.

And as for the 1433 deaths claim, the only source I can find is this meme.... Long story short, there isn't even anything to debunk here. Just some guy in a bedroom somewhere making use of photoshop and bad grammar.
 
this is interesting, pretty dang big coincidence the numbers are all the same. .. sounds like your memester got his memes mixed up.


dd.PNG

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=1,433+people+in+England+and+Wales+have+died+either+in+police+custody+or+following+other+police+contact+since+1990

edit add:
950 deaths took place in custody, 317 following a police pursuit, 112 were the result of a road traffic incident involving a police vehicle and 54 were police shootings. http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/19/deaths-police-custody-data
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It's the "police contract killer" claim that's got me.
And the 'statistically proven to be eight times more threatening than terrorists'. Seems to be a variation of 'scientifically proven', which some people habitually use in ways that demonstrate they have no idea what it means.
 
Since the 1,443 figure obviously refers to the story about the UK police, I've marked it debunked.

And the figure is people who have died in police custody, or following contact by the police. There's no analysis of if the deaths were actually caused by the police. Most of them were in custody, where you would expect a number of deaths from drugs, alcohol, and natural causes.


Since NZ has less than 1/10th the population of the UK, then I'd expect the actual figures to be 1/10th amount of the UK, and probably less.
 
Wow.

That might be a record for debunking.

Thank you all.

Well, you'd pretty much debunked it in your OP.

A debunking pro-tip though: if you've got a specific number like 1433, then you can usually use very simple search terms like 1433+deaths or 1433+police to see where it came from. It very quickly turns up the guardian story (or rather now it turns up this thread, even better)
 
@MikeG you did a great job getting the name of the original meme poster. You not only exposed the meme as false, you proved it is a purposeful fraud and that this Eastwood guy did NO fact checking at all on the claim before spreading it.
Paul Marian Heinrich YesRianne, I have seen official documents and NZ police statistics that includes police pursuits that end up in deadly crashes... I wouldn't do it if no information checked my dear... I am for TRUTH and JUSTICE, but not by use of lies or misconceptions, it's not my style. I opt for total transparency and total responsibility of the government before governed and not the other way around as it is now. https://archive.is/QipVG
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so you basically took out 3 birds with one stone. nice.
 
Since the 1,443 figure obviously refers to the story about the UK police, I've marked it debunked.

Thats just England and Wales, not including Scotland and Northern Ireland, but your point remains valid. It also highlights how the NRA etc also take stats from England and Wales and call them 'Great Britain' when discussing 'violent crime' in Europe...
 
Thats just England and Wales, not including Scotland and Northern Ireland, but your point remains valid. It also highlights how the NRA etc also take stats from England and Wales and call them 'Great Britain' when discussing 'violent crime' in Europe...
To be fair once Scotlandand Ireland are included stats go up for violent crimes.
 
New Zealand statistics are not actually available for that period anyway!

Probably eth biggest group of police-related deaths and injuries is from vehicle pursuits - this report by the Indpendant Police complaints Authority notes that from 19 December 2003-19 December 2008 there were 24 deaths, 91 major and 122 minor injuries during pursuits (Para 76).

This report notes the death of 27 people in police custody over a 10 year period, and this newspaper article notes police shootings from 1941-2008 - I count 22.
 
Well, you'd pretty much debunked it in your OP.

A debunking pro-tip though: if you've got a specific number like 1433, then you can usually use very simple search terms like 1433+deaths or 1433+police to see where it came from. It very quickly turns up the guardian story (or rather now it turns up this thread, even better)

Thank you. Good advice. I think my original search terms were too narrow. I was focused on New Zealand.
 
Vinny Eastwood is like a kiwi version of Alex Jones ... I had some conversations with him on a facebook group page where (imo) he was basically posting stuff to attract attention to his website, including chemtrails - I pointed him to contrailscience website but he didn't reply.

If you follow the video link above to youtube there are some comments about Paul Marian Heinrich, including the details of his breaching of protection orders nine times, which is why he was deported ...
Heinrich is a loser and a fraud. He was deported from this country because he treated not only the law but his family with complete and utter contempt. He repeatedly breached a protection order (9 times) that was put in place to protect his ex-wife and children in effect terrorising them. He burgled his ex-wife residence stealing items
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the Terrorist thing is interesting, your chance of 'death by cop' in New Zealand is a lot greater than death by terrorist. But that is because since 1980 there have only been three terrorist related deaths in NZ. The 1982 Wanganui bomb, which killed the bomber; the 1984 bomb attack on the Wellington Trade Hall, which killed the buildings care-taker; and the 1985 sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by French special forces which claimed the life of freelance photographer Fenando Pereria.
 
Interesting as a measure of how few of both cop related deaths and terrorism deaths there are in NZ. But both are so small as to render comparison meaningless.

In US, even including 9/11, there's still more LEO killings than terrorist killings on average per year. Vastly more in recent years.
 
1443 in 25 years?

Statistics in Brazil show 2000 deaths by cops every year. I tried to find the statistics for other countries to find the top 10 but I couldn't. I am almost sure that Brazil is in the top 10.

Of course the number of death by criminals are way higher than this, and the number of death by terrorist is way lower.

And there is no police state there.

This meme image makes no sense at all, and should be used as the perfect example of fear-mongering and statistics distortion. There are a lot of better ways to discuss police brutality than BS like this one.
 
Statistics in Brazil show 2000 deaths by cops every year. I tried to find the statistics for other countries to find the top 10 but I couldn't. I am almost sure that Brazil is in the top 10.
New Zealand would be far down on such a list. Like in the UK, NZ cops normally don't carry guns.

Eastwood seems to be in the wrong country for such fearmongering. While I'm sure they have problems , it's like Disneyland compared to the US.
 
I heard back again from Vinny Eastwood yesterday.

Eastwood 6 Aug 15.png

This is a deflection and a non-answer.

I responded by giving him the link to 2012 Guardian story already cited and pointed out that it applied to England and not New Zealand. No response yet. We'll see.
 
This is a deflection and a non-answer.
i don't know. sounds pretty honest to me. He admits he doesnt know and explains why that is irrelevant. I give him alot of credit, most people are too whimpy to be honest about it.
 
I heard back again from Vinny Eastwood yesterday.

Eastwood 6 Aug 15.png
The logic here is great. Let's apply it:

There are two possibilities: 1. my roomate will go berserk and stab me in five seconds, and 2. my roomate will not stab me in five seconds and I'll live happily ever after. Fuckem's Razor says, 'if there's two possibilities [sic] and one's so horrible that you wish it wasn't true, then it's probably true' - so the logical thing to do is attack my roomate in preemptive self-defence.

The same logic works anytime you buy coffee in Starbucks, or, for that matter, when your mum offers you a cup of tea: either she is trying to kill you and has poisoned the tea, or she has not; as the former possibility is so horrible that you must assume it's true, you can never eat or drink anything again.

'Uh, sorry mum, I won't be home for Christmas - you know how it is, what with the poisoned tea and booby-trapped guest-room and such - yeah, love you too'. :)
 
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New Zealand would be far down on such a list. Like in the UK, NZ cops normally don't carry guns.

Sort of depends what you mean by "normally don't carry" - they don't carry them "on the hip" when on normal patrol, but there are firearms in most police cars, in a secure box, accessible by sergeants and specialists such as dog officers, and all officers are given basic firearm training.

Eastwood seems to be in the wrong country for such fearmongering. While I'm sure they have problems , it's like Disneyland compared to the US.

And we like it that way! :)

No land borders helps too! :)
 
I heard back again from Vinny Eastwood yesterday.

Eastwood 6 Aug 15.png

This is a deflection and a non-answer.

I responded by giving him the link to 2012 Guardian story already cited and pointed out that it applied to England and not New Zealand. No response yet. We'll see.

If you add up all the causes of death...the leading cause of death is.......

It's not just his razor that is blunt......
 
i don't know. sounds pretty honest to me. He admits he doesnt know and explains why that is irrelevant. I give him alot of credit, most people are too whimpy to be honest about it.

I think you are right on that point. He is absolutely honest and unapologetic about his stance.

What bothers me is his "worst case scenario" approach to things is just an excuse to accept any information that conforms to his worldview.

Our most recent FB exchange. He seems to think that Paul Marian Heinrich's data is valid.

Eastwood.png
 
He seems to think that Paul Marian Heinrich's data is valid
He already admitted he didnt know and is just using "F'ems Razor" philosophy. Did you watch that video interview, i only saw a few brief clips but Vinnie kinda was... ummm.... passionate on the subject of cop-hate.
 
He already admitted he didnt know and is just using "F'ems Razor" philosophy. Did you watch that video interview, i only saw a few brief clips but Vinnie kinda was... ummm.... passionate on the subject of cop-hate.

No wonder he hates the cops so much - here is a video of him being "forced" to stop protesting ... skip through to about 12:00 for the police brutality ...
 
What bothers me is his "worst case scenario" approach to things is just an excuse to accept any information that conforms to his worldview.

That is the problem with conspiracy theorists - as many of us have experienced with chemtrail believers, their worldview determines their beliefs - no matter how much you try to show them the science or the false information they are being given, they simply cannot accept it.

I see that he has over 21,000 followers on youtube - hope they are not all nz'ers or the country really is in trouble!

Having said that he has a good point about the GCSB bill and there is a lot of opposition to that here.
 
skip through to about 12:00 for the police brutality ...
Shocking!!

seriously though if Mr Eastwood thinks that is police intimidation, he should come to the UK and argue with the Metropolitan police Tactical Response Unit, that should give him a bit of perspective to work with.
 
Sort of depends what you mean by "normally don't carry" - they don't carry them "on the hip" when on normal patrol, but there are firearms in most police cars, in a secure box, accessible by sergeants and specialists such as dog officers, and all officers are given basic firearm training.
NZ or UK?
 
Shocking!!

seriously though if Mr Eastwood thinks that is police intimidation, he should come to the UK and argue with the Metropolitan police Tactical Response Unit, that should give him a bit of perspective to work with.

The problem with people like Vinny is that he actually makes it harder for genuine investigative journalists because if someone reports on something that really is happening they can be dismissed by the authorities as a "conspiracy theorist" - the issue of GCSB surveillance is a good example of that.

And like anywhere we have good cops and bad ones, so we are lucky they aren't armed or no doubt there would be more police killings
 
No wonder he hates the cops so much - here is a video of him being "forced" to stop protesting ... skip through to about 12:00 for the police brutality ...


This was one of the most civil exchanges with a police officer I have ever seen.

Interesting that the police officer was well-informed about Orwell (about 20:00).
 
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