Police ignore slashed tyres but use harassment and legal bullying when stickers are placed on genocidal products
5 October 2026
Media Advisory
Police ignore slashed tyres but use harassment and legal bullying when stickers are placed on genocidal products
PSNA is alleging Police harassment and legal bullying in a case coming up at the Christchurch District court at 2.15pm this afternoon.
Here is the submission which will be made to the court this afternoon:
Submission to court re allegations of stickers put on products in Noel Leeming
This charge involves putting stickers on SodaStream products in the Noel Leeming shop on Moorhouse Ave.
The police information alleges no less than $10,321.60 in damage was done to Noel Leeming property and the police seek this amount in reparation.
Our concerns are these:
The police decision to lay a charge of wilful damage under the Crimes Act for alleged stickering means we have elected trial by jury. So we have allegations of anti-genocide stickers applied to products complicit in genocide and the police have weighed in with charges of wilful damage under the Crimes Act resulting in a massive waste of the court’s time and resources.
The stickers could have been removed easily and quickly by the police or the staff at Noel Leeming at zero cost. But that’s clearly not the outcome the police wanted. The claim of $10,321.60 in damages seems a crude attempt to claw back the $10,000 police paid to John Minto after the Independent Police Conduct Authority found the police acted unlawfully when they pepper sprayed and arrested him two years ago.
It is not the role of the court to humour this police overreach and our requests to the court are these:
To request the police to withdraw the charge of wilful damage under the Crimes act and ask them to reconsider whether this situation warrants any intervention of the criminal law in the first place.
To propose the court suggest to Noel Leeming that if they think there is $10,321.60 worth of damage to their property that they make a civil claim along these lines. It is not the role of the police to act as harassers or debt collectors for private businesses acting unethically and immorally.
Around the western world – in countries with deep histories of European colonialism and Eurocentrism alongside anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian racism there is a widespread crackdown on protest in opposition to Israel’s apartheid, genocidal policies against Palestinians.
For example in Germany people have been arrested for chanting “Free Palestine”, in the UK people have been arrested for supporting civil disobedience to stop a genocide, in parts of Australia chanting “from the river to the sea” has been criminalised while Australia’s so-called anti-Semitism hearings (reminiscent of the McCarthyistic hearings in 1950s America) have largely ignored Jewish groups opposed to Israel’s genocide and have equated opposition to Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide – to anti-semitism.
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand this court case is the way we do things. A campaign of police harassment and legal bullying.
At home John Minto has a tyre which was slashed by someone coming on to his property recently – it follows spray painting on the footpath and other damage at his home. We have registered this on the police 105 number but nothing has happened – the police just aren’t interested. They say they are too busy. But a person puts stickers on a genocidal product in a Noel Leeming store and the police magically appear in huge numbers.
Our request is for this court to bring some sanity to the fore here and act along the lines we have proposed.
Ben Vorderegger - Chair PSNA
John Minto – Campaign co-ordinator PSNA