Collins quiet on cop bash ruling

A political row has erupted over the sentence of a rich-lister’s son, who was given community service after a violently assaulting a female police officer.

Police Minister Judith Collins said yesterday she could not comment on the case of Nikolas James Posa Delegat, the son of multimillionaire winemaker Jim Delegat, while it was within the appeal period.

She previously threw her support behind Nikolas Delegat’s victim, Constable Alana Kane, when she was assaulted in Dunedin in 2011.

‘‘I don’t want to be the person who stuffs up an appeal case in an attempt to grandstand,’’ she told MPs in the House yesterday.

Labour’s police spokesman Stuart Nash said Collins had always been a ‘‘tough talking woman who stood up for men and women on the front line.’’

‘‘What has changed so much that she’s now publicly silent?’’

Police Association president Greg O’Connor was critical of the sentence, suggesting Delegat’s penalty may have been harsher without the aid of a top lawyer.

‘‘Had we been talking about a young Polynesian man from south Dunedin, then I’m sure we would have been talking whether it was 12 months or six months, or maybe even longer,’’ he said.

Kane’s attacker in 2011, Jamie Trev Cooper-Siggleko, served three years and five months in prison for the assault and a benefit fraud charge. He had prior offences. Delegat was sentenced to 300 hours’ community service and ordered to pay $5000.

When Kane was assaulted in 2011, Collins said it proved why harsher sentences were needed for people who attacked police. Police have been issuing precharge warnings inconsistently, in some cases giving non-Maori more lenient treatment than Maori, the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) says.

In one sample, Waikato police were found to have issued only 24 per cent of eligible Maori offenders with pre-charge warnings (PCWs), compared with 55 per cent of Pakeha offenders.

There were regional differences, too.

Police in the far south were most likely to issue the warnings, but cops in West Auckland and the North Shore seemed least enthusiastic about the warnings.

Pre-charge warnings can be issued for minor offences where the maximum penalty is less than six months’ jail.

The IPCA said although precharge warnings were more likely to be given to non-Maori offenders

Yesterday, she said in 2012 she brought in legislation to make sentencing tougher and ‘‘this matter is currently within an appeal period and I do not wish to breach Cabinet manual or the law by interfering and making comment about this particular case’’.

‘‘All we can do is bring the law in and it’s up to the courts to interpret it.’’

Collins did say she had ‘‘absolutely zero tolerance for people who attack police officers’’.

Delegat, a then-first-year University of Otago student, punched Kane several times she lost consciousness about 11pm on March 26, 2015. She spent 15 hours at Dunedin Hospital after the incident, was off work and could not drive for two months, and still suffered headaches.

Nash said six years ago there was a series of attacks against police officers and Prime Minister John Key said the Government had a duty to send a signal that such attacks were unacceptable.

‘‘The Prime Minister and Police Minister must come out and condemn the sentence as totally inadequate and state that Crown Law will appeal,’’ he said.