Not the usual suspects as cops line up for case

A GROUP of police officers will experience law enforcement from the other side when they appear in a photo line-up aimed at identifying the culprit in a case of alleged police abuse.

Photos of officers from the Palmerston North district are being used in a montage to be shown to a teenager who says he caught a policeman on tape letting rip at him with an expletive-laden tirade.

The photo line-up comes more than seven months after Foxton apprentice butcher Dyllan Vaughan took his case to the Independent Police Complaints Authority alleging inappropriate behaviour.

Vaughan, 16, was driving home from work in Feilding last September when he says a police officer in a patrol car put on his lights and pulled him over in North St.

He says at the time he did not realise his iPhone was recording. He said he’d left it on after taping a song from the radio earlier.

But the phone captured the exchange between the two, which begins with the officer demanding to see Vaughan’s licence and asking why he thinks he’s been pulled over, saying ‘‘Why’d I f...... pull you over, dickhead?’’

During the incident the cop also told Vaughan: ‘‘I catch you doing that sort of bullshit again and I’ll go over your car and I’ll find as much trouble as I can for you.’’

The teenager, who was driving his mum’s car, said he felt threatened and intimidated, so decided to complain in the hope that the officer would be censured.

Dyllan’s father, Peter Vaughan, told the Sunday Star- Times last week that his son would attend a meeting with police and his lawyer on Friday, to attempt to identify the officer.

He said the meeting only came after the family pushed for it.

‘‘ They’ve never been forthcoming with that,’’ Vaughan said. ‘‘Quite frankly, I think it’s unprofessional. This should have been done seven months ago when that face was fresh in Dyllan’s mind.’’

Inspector Mark Harrison from the Palmerston North police said showing Dyllan the officers’ faces was a ‘‘last resort’’. He said police had asked ‘‘ everyone’’ including their communications staff to listen to the recording of the voice but no one had been able to identify it, leading them to the belief it was not a local officer, or potentially not a policeman at all.

Harrison called the incident ‘‘perplexing’’.

‘‘We have no doubt that if it was someone working in Feilding we would have been able to recognise it.’’ He said police staff and the public were concerned about the investigation so they had a duty to try and close it. After Dyllan views the images, police will decide their next step.