. MUTED ELECTRONIC MUSIC My name is Shane Te Ihorangi Cribb. On the 31st of March 2006 I was charged with careless driving causing injury and ordered to pay $18,000 reparation. This is my story. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015 CAR ZOOMS TRUCK WHOOSHES TYRES SCREECH, CRASH! Careless use of a motor vehicle causing injury. TYRES SCREECH, CRASH! Found guilty. He was a learner driver, so, um... And with the experience of police officers, you sort of think that, um, he's automatically going to be in the wrong. Slammed my brakes, and pretty much that was it. CRASH! Hmm. TAPE REWINDS REFLECTIVE PIANO MUSIC BIRDS TWEET When I first moved down to Alex, I was weedeating, mowing lawns and that for the first time, so... Didn't really like that job. Thought I'd get into something more` that would get me somewhere, so went to the blocking factory, and, yeah, seemed to be going good. Would've met Koren when we were at the park. Uh, it was her hair that stood out, pretty much. That first day when we met, she had her hair all in braids. Started hanging around each other, meet each other at the skatepark, and, yeah, just blossomed from there. WOMAN: He was about 15, and I was 16. We were with the same group of friends and, um, I guess hung out more so on the weekends and that and, yeah, I guess got together not long after. TAPE REWINDS ETHEREAL MUSIC It was nice ` early morning. Wasn't raining or nothing. I shot off... in the morning. Can't remember what time it was, but I know it wasn't late, and just on my normal leisure to` to work, and out come out this car. Slammed my brakes, and` and that's pretty much when I hit Mr Ford. I remember waking up in the ambulance. Um... Came to, and then there was two people in the ambulance that were there with me, and that was the last thing I remembered, yeah. Stitches to both my knees, um, dislocated my right shoulder, um, stitches in my gums, and black eye, and, yeah, just a lot of swelling around the face. We were in, uh, Wellington at a hockey tournament, and I remember Koren coming into my room at the time, and she said that Shane had had an accident in her car. I just remember feeling sick, because we w-weren't there, and then we was to find out it was the police, I was just, like, 'Oh my gosh, of all people.' You know? (SCOFFS) Of all things to crash into. RADIO: A policeman and an Alexandra youth are in hospital with moderate injuries after a crash on a Central Otago highway early this morning. UNSETTLING MUSIC Constable Cassidy would've come in about 10 o'clock. She would've come in pretty much just as I got to the hospital. They were still trying to tend to my wounds and everything, and she was pretty much trying to force her statement out of me then and there. She got kicked out by the nurse. That's when my auntie come in as well, and she told me what had happened, so... it was a pretty big shock for me. (CHUCKLES) She told me that I had crashed into a cop car. TYRES SCREECH She wasn't too sure what had happened, but you could see in the back of her head that she was thinking that it was my fault, you know? I could feel it, and yeah,... it wasn't a nice feeling. I got home and went round to see him at his stepmum's, so he was out of hospital. Um... And, yeah, see` seeing his face was pretty scary. Uh, it didn't, like` Obviously it was Shane, but it didn't look like him. He was swollen, um, and just looked really in pain. The only person who was injured was Shane ` to a serious degree. He was quite a big lad at the time. He was probably 105kg, 110kg, and, um, so the weight of his body actually snapped the seat belt off at the binding at the bottom underneath the seat, um, bent the steering wheel over and he put his face and head through the windscreen. So very very lucky boy to be alive, really. He was still suffering from concussion, obviously. He was pretty knocked about. Um, and I asked him what happened, and he really couldn't give me much information, except to say that, 'It's all right, Steve. The police said I'd just get a ticket for not being able to stop in time' 'and get a $150 fine.' Would've been a couple of days later Cassidy ended up coming back to my stepmother's house, and they were trying to charge me with careless use of a motor vehicle causing injury. Within that week, I had to go to the police station. I was trying to take Steve Potter with me just for that moral support. You'll be able to get out of here and go home. I rang Officer Cassidy, um, I think on the Monday morning, prior to the interview to ask if it would be all right if I attend, and what she told me was` uh, was quite shocking. Um, she indicated that I wasn't going to be part of the interview, and she'll decide who was going to be there and that, um, uh... that, um` When I asked her that, you know, 'Has he been informed of his rights? 'And he's` he's entitled to have someone there,' she s` told me that he can figure that out for himself. Even when I was doing my interview, it was like Cassidy was trying to put the words into my mouth. I'd say something, she'd twist it around again. (GRUNTS SOFTLY) They were trying to point it out that I was speeding, that I was late for work. Um, they tried to do a whole lot of scenarios, trying to point it at me, you know? Just to make it look worse. STEVE: And they kept trying to make out he was, you know, picking up a CD or looking at his speedo and didn't see the vehicle on the road in front of him. Officer Ford said that he carried on over the bridge to turn into the driveway when he was attempted to be overtaken by Shane. CRASH! OMINOUS MUSIC I pretty much said to him at the time, 'Don't worry about it. Leave it up to me. 'I know a few of the police in town, and, you know, we've got quite a good rapport with them.' And I thought it was just obviously a` a` you know, a bit of confusion, and we'll get it sorted out. And that's when I got charged ` careless use of a motor vehicle causing injury. He got sent a letter at some point by the police for reparation for the police vehicle. So that was delivered to him. (CHUCKLES) And they were trying to get me to pay the compensation of the cop's vehicle ` Mr Ford's vehicle ` and pretty much already had it all set out on paper. They weren't mucking around. (CHUCKLES) They were trying to lay it out. Mm. I think that's when, yeah, Mum and Dad thought, well, he needs` he needs a good lawyer,... (CHUCKLES) um, because, yeah, he was just being walked all over, really. This is one of the things that precipitated Steve in getting really riled when Shane got a letter saying, 'You had an accident. You damaged a police car. 'There's $19,000-odd worth of damage done. Um, could we have a cheque, please?' And I think that was just, as far as Steve was concerned, absolutely ridiculous. I thought, 'Man, I'm gonna have to start digging into this myself.' We went round and had a look at the car, and I s` looked at the car and seen a smash right across the front of the car with a line across the top of the bonnet, and I thought, 'Crumbs. That looks like a head-on,' you know? And, um, couldn't really picture together what had actually happened, so we went back then and had a look at the police ute and saw that the police ute had been crashed between the front tyre and the rear tyre like a T-bone collision, and, um, so I immediately come to the conclusion that at some stage, the officer must have pulled in front of him. INTRIGUING MUSIC I thought, 'If I don't do something here, um, Shane is gonna get convicted of careless driving. 'He's going to end up with a bill for $17,000 or $18,000.' That was when I went out to the scene and started doing my own measurements, um, taking my own photographs while the scene was still fresh and there were still marks on the road. When I first saw where the vehicles had actually ended up, something didn't seem quite right. CRASH! The pictures in the newspaper actually indicated very clearly that it was a T-bone collision and, um, from taking into account where the vehicles were struck, I was able to rewind and actually see where the vehicle actually started to make its turn. ENGINE TURNS OVER The police vehicle had to start making its turn on the far left-hand side of the road either right on the edge of the road or actually about a foot off the road. And so Ford's statement saying that he turned from the centre line into the driveway just didn't make sense. And it was then when I brought all that information back and started to put it down on paper and started to actually draw the turning circle and the capabilities of the p` the police vehicle, looking on the Internet to get the braking distances and reaction times and things that it takes for a vehicle to stop that I realised that, um, there was no way Shane could have been guilty of careless driving. In fact, if anything, he was` he was attentive, and he was trying to avoid a vehicle turning in front of him. So I thought, 'Well, with all that information, what we need to do is get a professional crash consultant 'to view the case for us.' Well, Steve already had a theory of what he believed might have happened, so he managed to obtain another vehicle that was very very similar to Neil Ford's. Uh, and he set about doing several drive-throughs of` uh, at the scene, uh, effectively to show what the police version was and what alternate versions might have been. CRASH! If Ford's vehicle had turned from the centre of the road, the angle between the vehicles at impact would have been very fine and quite shallow, because the car wouldn't` uh, Ford's vehicle wouldn't have been able to turn much by that time. But in the photographs, it was quite clear that that angle was quite a lot deeper. It became pretty clear that Ford couldn't have turned from the centre of the road as he was saying. Ford was either to the left edge of the road or up into the grass verge area off the left side of the road. REFLECTIVE PIANO MUSIC I really thought it would be a simple case when I went to Mike Cook with Hamish Piercy's report. Senior Sergeant Mike Cook at the time really gave the report no weight. He said he would leave it up to the judge to make the decision. Why wouldn't they listen to me, you know? Why didn't they look at Hamish Piercy's report and see the facts in the report? Why were they so hell-bent on taking it to court? MAN: And I just don't get it. That's when I started to think that things are really starting to sound very very wrong. I'd gone around and interviewed or approached a lot of people ` our neighbours, people that drove past. People are creatures of habit, so I thought if I could find someone that was driving past and I recognised them, maybe they saw something. Maybe they saw him in the grass. Maybe they saw the accident. We found people that thought they saw something, but in reality didn't come up with anything that was going to help us in court, and then I was approached a couple of days before the court saying that there was a person called Derek Hume that might have saw the accident. I was, uh, in McCrostie's` McCrostie's Parts and Machinery in Alexandra, and Gaylene McCrostie said to me, um, 'You hear about this young fella going up the court for hitting the cop?' And I said, 'What are you talking about?' So she explained, and I said, 'That's not the way I saw it.' And she said, 'Well, you'd better talk to Steve Potter.' He said, 'Oh, no, no. No, we didn't see the accident,' and I thought, oh, it was another lost lead. He said, 'But we did see him parked in the grass on the side of the road prior to the accident.' (CHUCKLES) And I thought, 'Thank goodness.' REFLECTIVE PIANO MUSIC I was working as a shepherd here for quite a few years. Eddie was coming to pick me up that morning to go to work at Earnscleugh Station. So, we get to about here, and there's the Earnscleugh Rd in front of us, and we see Mr Ford go past that way. And we carried on up the road to, uh` to work at Earnscleugh Station, and` and up over the Earnscleugh bridge ` well, the bridge over the Fraser River, that is. Uh, here he is parked on the left. There was plenty of room to, uh, pull over there, and that's when we thought, 'Well, he's parked there with no lights on. Who's he waiting on to catch?' And, uh, we never gave it another thought till we came back down the road and saw him dinged on the opposite side. Here he is. Here's Ford's ute on the opposite side of the road, nosed into a ditch, and he's been T-boned by another car. I saw Constable Cassidy standing there. We thought, 'Well, he stuffed up,' cos obviously he did a U-ie in front oncoming traffic. He's gonna get a smack on the hand, and, you know, it'll all go away. Shortly after I'd been talking to Steve, um, I got a call from the lawyer in town, uh, and he wanted me to go to court on this day to give evidence, but I said, 'Well, look, I'm sorry. I'm going away camping,' and, uh` and that, and, oh, he wasn't that happy about that. But I said, 'Well, Eddie was in the truck with me. 'Um, he saw the same thing as me.' And he said, 'Oh, that's fine.' He said, 'Well, we only want one witness.' So Eddie went to court instead of me. If I thought it was really serious, I might have put off my trip. We were there the same day as we drove by and saw Mr Ford parked... But since Eddie, whose integrity is faultless, I thought, 'Well, he` he saw the same thing,' and that's when the lawyer said, 'Yeah, that's fine. We just want one ` one witness.' You know, I've lived in the country a long time, and I thought, 'If I was shooting rabbits, I'd take a double-barrelled shotgun over a single-barrelled,' so why they took one, I'm not sure, if you want to win the case. I mean, if you're fighting a case, you` you come up with, you know, in my opinion, you should come up with your best shot, and, uh... But anyway, it was so straightforward, I-I didn't think it mattered. I had Eddie's testimony the` the policeman parked in the` in the grass, we had a` an ex-policeman crash investigator who had a very compelling report of, um, his view and findings as an expert on what had happened. So I went into court thinking` I was pretty stoked. I thought, 'Oh, this is gonna be pretty easy,' you know? Well, to be fair, I-I` I mean, I don't know if many people have witnessed court sessions, but to me, this court session was an absolute joke. OMINOUS MUSIC . KOREN: So, I went to court in Alex with Mum and Dad, and` and my sister went. So that was the f` Shane's first appearance, and... it was` it` it was a pretty... (CHUCKLES) scary experience, actually. Shane's testimony in court was absolutely amazing. He was like a rock. At the end of the day, it's easy to... give a good testimony when you're telling the truth, and he had no reason to lie. We all felt pretty confident that` that the judge would be able to make a, uh, decision based on all the facts and` and conclude, as we were concluding, that the police made a mistake. When I saw the police's testimony, especially Officer Ford in the` in the stand, it` to me it` it seemed very obviously he was lying. He was be` getting confused. He was, um, muttering his words. He couldn't find the photographs properly. He` He really looked very very uncomfortable and, um, he certainly didn't look like an honest man up there. So for the judge to actually say he felt he was honest and reliable witness, I found that quite hard to accept, really. You've got an experienced cop who's got a number of years ` I think he had 25 to 30 years at the time in the police ` versus 17-, 18-year-old guy, uh, with minimal driving experience. So the court's gonna weigh up that level of experience and go, 'Well, who do we trust?' I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth,... CRASH! ...so help me God. The prosecution tried to make out that Shane was inattentive and, um, didn't see the vehicle on the road in front of him. He was driving recklessly. He was a danger... KOREN: Looking at Shane in court, he just looked so helpless and vulnerable. Just knowing that you're innocent, you know, and just what they were willing to go through to... to try hide one of their own. Nah, I was not a happy boy that day. That's for sure. Unfortunately, the` the judge sided with the` the testimony of, uh, the police at the time. Found guilty. You know, I can remember even the reporters coming out of the court, saying, 'Man, that cop was lying through his teeth.' And yet, here's a judge saying that he felt he was honest and reliable. I was angry, um,... especially when you know in the back of your head it wasn't your fault, you know, just winds you up even more. Well, I come back from the camping trip and, well, I had to ring Eddie, see how his court appearance went, and he said, 'We're liars.' I said, 'What are you talking about?' He said, 'Well, we never saw him parked on the side of the road. He's never been there in his life.' We saw him way down the other end towards Alexandra at Marshall Rd, And I said, 'We don't go that way to work.' Eddie said, 'I said that, but that didn't make any difference.' And, um, that's when I realised things were` were not what they seemed, so somebody was telling porkies then. I was shocked and... (EXHALES) really disheartened, um,... because i-it was, like, well, is that it? Is that it now? Where do we go from here? It was quite sad, really, cos` I mean, I think we all had a bit of a bawl,... (CHUCKLES) cos we thought, 'What do you gotta do in this country to actually get the truth to come out?' You know? And, um,... so,... (SIGHS) I think we were pretty much advised that we have to accept it and get on with our lives, and we'd have to go then to Dunedin for the sentencing. Um, and I suppose, to be fair, at the time we played all our cards, because we had got a crash expert in ` an expert in his field. We've had an eyewitness that saw him parked in the grass, but both those testimonies were given no weight. When we went to Dunedin to the sentencing, it was quite an emotional day for everyone. I was very angry, and` and, um, the judge spoke very... harshly to Shane, I felt. He pretty much tried to give me a bollocking and told me that I was the one that could've killed the cop, you know, and just was pushing it from there and, yeah, kind of, tried to make me feel stink for something that I never done, you know? Yeah. He almost ridiculed him at court. He told him, 'You are guilty. You could've killed that officer. 'You were careless in your actions.' And, I mean, you could see Shane going weak at the knees, and, um` and I was getting angry. REPORTER: Back in court for his sentencing, Shane Cribb lost his licence for six months and was fined $600. He may still face reparation for the police vehicle. You know, the lawyer come up to me and said, 'Steve, it's now time to put it to bed, you know? 'You need to get on with your lives. 'Go down, sort out the payments for the fine, and get on with your life,' and I just looked at him, and I said, 'This is half` This is far from over.' How do these people bloody sleep at night? REPORTER: Anger you'd expect from those affected. VOICE BREAKING: Because it bloody stinks. On the way home, it was a pretty quiet trip back to Alex. Um, Steve tried to make a couple of jokes, but... (CHUCKLES) that, yeah, just wasn't happening that day. KOREN: After being found guilty, I think things probably got worse for Shane. He was probably already at rock bottom, so... (SCOFFS) where do you go from there with more bad news, you know? And there were still a lot of, like, people in town that maybe did think he was in the wrong as well. Um, so it was a lot for a` a young 17-year-old to deal with. I was negative towards the cops. Um... Didn't believe in any of the justice system, so I made up my own rules, being younger. Y-Yeah. Just started to do things ` rebel from the normal things that we'd do in life, and, yeah, and just started going downhill really fast. I was seeing Neil Ford while I was travelling to work every morning, so once that had happened, that would ruin my whole day. And just, yeah, having to deal with that just` I don't know, just made me angrier and angrier every day. Yeah, just made for an ugly little boy, pretty much. KOREN: Dad, at the time, was working at TyreLand, which is directly across the road from the Alex Police Station. I think that must have been pretty` (CHUCKLES) pretty rough for Dad. Um... So, it's just like living and breathing what was going on, you know? He couldn't get away from it. My boss at the time told me` He said I need to drop it, because, you know` And it'd better not affect my job. Um,... but the thing is it's` it's` Sometimes you gotta do what's right, you know? And, um` And this was the right thing to do. It` It` This was a young man's life. I mean, it's not our son, you know? I mean, I really didn't know him that well, but he needed someone to help him. You know, sometimes when you're down, everything goes wrong? The drinking, the smoking and... all of that just, yeah, kept going downhill for me after that. Shane was back at his dad's house. He was living there, but it wasn't the ideal situation either. Household wasn't the greatest. Um, there was a little bit of drugs and that around. STEVE: He had, really, nowhere to stay. I think he wanted to be a little bit on his own for a bit, which probably was not a good thing, but we decided to lend him our caravan, and so he stayed on his father's section in our caravan. But he was getting pretty thin and` and wasn't looking after himself. Oh, that caravan would've been my home for... (CHUCKLES) a good year or so, half a year, but... Yeah, there was some cold times through there. Ended up spending my first full winter in that caravan. I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. He lost a lot of weight... at` at one point, um, which pr` I think was just a lot to do with s` with stress and how it was affecting him. I believed he was driving recklessly. (ECHOES) STEVE: Denise was actually cooking meals, and we were dropping meals around to him, cos he wasn't actually feeding himself. Um... We were trying to get him to, um, see people for some help ` psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists. But he just didn't react to them. He was starting to get quite, um, angry and quite violent. Um... I remember o` watching him one night punch a fence and` and break his arm` break his hand and` and then, just a few days later, smash a garage door with the same broken hand. Um... It takes a fair bit of emotion for someone to do that. This'd be 9 o'clock at night, and you'd have Steve at my house trying to calm me down, you know, for a good two hours, and this is out of his life. (INHALES DEEPLY) You know, this is how much of an angel he is to me. In the end it` it, um` Yeah, the crash definitely affected our relationship ` no doubt. We ended up just more fighting than actual living life, yeah. It was` It's not the one. Both found out... (CHUCKLES) that it was just easier if we moved our own ways, yeah. I think when` when we, um, broke up and... we probably worried even more, because no one was with him. (CHUCKLES) You know? I can remember sitting on his bed, 2 o'clock in the morning, many nights, just trying to get him through another day. Yeah. It just gets so dark it can't get any brighter, and it was just getting darker and darker for me. Looking back on it, it all just seemed like one big, bad thing, yeah. REFLECTIVE MUSIC I don't think you think of giving up; I think you just think of` you know, where do you go from here? Because you've pretty much exhausted all your w` you know, all the avenues of where you could go to, and the` the only avenue I thought was next was to go to the media. REPORTER: Shane Cribb doesn't remember much about the crash. It saw him charged with careless driving causing injury. I remember seeing the bridge. There was nothing as I come over, Then suddenly there was a vehicle in the middle of the road, and that's all I remember, then slamming my brakes. With the full weight of the law falling against Shane Cribb, Close Up sought a second opinion from another crash analyst, a professional engineer and forensic scientist with over 35 years' experience. Well, the TV got a crash, um, expert called Chris Marks from Auckland to review the case as well, and his findings were the same as Hamish Piercy's, which gave us two crash experts, um, with the same opinion. What's more, he says, Shane's skid marks prove he swerved to avoid a hazard. The fact he doesn't remember it all part of what can happen in an accident. It was when we took it to Close Up, that's when we found, um, one more witness had come forth from Cromwell. Her name was Pip Wither at the time. She` She saw the accident in her rear-vision mirror. So she physically saw the` the accident, and that was the break that we needed. Phillipa had actually seen Neil Ford in the middle of the road and me and pretty much seen the whole car crash in motion from the middle of the road to us both in the ditch. So her information was key. We needed to look at getting a retrial, and to do that we needed a Queen's Counsel lawyer, basically ` someone that's got a bit of clout that's actually going to be able to get the ball rolling. Steve was concerned, and, I think fairly, that if we just ground our way from Central Otago, we might not have enough grunt to get the whole thing working, so having Colin in the background just gave us a relatively large cudgel that the police knew existed, and if required we could wheel out and give them a slapping with. MAN: It didn't seem to matter how much firepower they had, how much factual information they had, it just wasn't being taken any notice of. It wasn't getting through. The police version of events was not physically possible ` couldn't happen. And I thought there was a` a pretty good prospect of, um, getting a rehearing. Steve Potter phoned me and told me that he was arranging to have a meeting with the police in Alexandra, and I think I said something like, uh, 'I think it'd be a good idea if I came along with you,' um, cos he could be pretty much outnumbered. I sat there for quite some time arguing the point with the police, and` and explaining the situation. They kept throwing curveballs at me, and I need to get on with my life, and the judge has made the decision, and why can't I accept that? And, um, I remember sitting there thinking, 'I've got Colin Withnall here, a QC, 'who actually hasn't said a heck of a lot, and, um, I've been doing all the talking and all the explaining,' and then Colin said something really quite profound. He looked at the police and said, 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'the police ma`' He said` 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'the judge made the decision on the information that was provided by the police.' He said, 'That information is proven to be incorrect and biased.' And then we got into some more argument about things, but I thought that was quite a profound thing to say, because th-that's exactly what had happened. It was then that I thought, 'Well, if I could get the police out on to the road, 'to perform the turn, then they would see that turn was possible.' So in a way I, sort of, probably conned them a little bit in saying, 'If you can take me there and show me how this accident happened, then I'll accept what you're saying.' TENSE MUSIC COLIN: And we asked them to take, um, an identical police vehicle and invited them to reconstruct the manoeuvre which Ford claimed he, uh, had been undertaking immediately, uh, before the collision. I put a stone in the middle of the road beside the white line where the police vehicle's rear wheel was, and I asked one of the officers if they would perform the turn described by Officer Ford and see if they could put their vehicle on or near the white line where the stone was, and, um, I remember Andrew Burns saying to me` pointing his finger at me and` and saying, 'And I suppose you wanna drive, do you?' And I said, 'No, sir. I want you to drive it.' (CHUCKLES) COLIN: After about four or five attempts with possibly two or three different police officers driving, they found they were u-unable ` simply unable, physically unable ` to get the police vehicle into the position it was at the time of impact. To me, I think that was a turning point. I think it was a point at which, um, the senior officers of the police began to seriously take` take notice that, uh, there was something, you know, to what people were saying. And it was then that Colin said to them, 'Where do we go to from here, gentlemen?' PIANO MUSIC When we found out that there was gonna be a rehearing, um, we all felt pretty` pretty excited about it... (CHUCKLES) but at the same time really nervous too, because it` it was like a` a up and down roller coaster ride for us too where one minute something great would happen, and then the next minute,... you know, that would just be washed away. Lot of people were talking about it, especially the` the older folk. Um, I'd get a lot of old ladies stop me downtown and give me a hug, you know? 'You poor little thing.' R-Random people would be coming up to Mum and Dad and offering help or money or anything, so I think that` that's what really kept them going as well. People around me were excited for me that I had got the rehearing, but in my head I was just going, 'It's just another court day,' you know? Already had no faith in the justice system, so... yeah. REFLECTIVE PIANO MUSIC COLIN: Shortly before` A matter of, I think, days before the hearing, we were advised that the police were going to offer no evidence. What that meant was that, um, the judge would have no option but to dismiss the charge against Shane. Of course, that's exactly what happened. In light of the police not offering any evidence, uh, against you on this charge, the charge is, uh, accordingly dismissed. One of the most disappointing things about the rehearing was there was no apology from the judge. There was no handshake. There was no apology from the police. It was, uh... It was really a bittersweet nothing for everyone, and we walked out of there feeling quite flat, really. We'd won but hadn't won, you know? It was, um... Yeah, it was a pretty weird day. APPLAUSE All that. Like, a-all that fighting and... How many years for just,... 'It's done,' you know? That's it. RADIO: Police have been ordered to pay Shane Cribb nearly $18,000 in costs, the judge concluding the police investigation was less than satisfactory and not in accordance with best practice. It wasn't compensational money in his pocket or anything like that. It was just a payout from the money that had been spent ` I think probably most, if not all, um, funded by Steve Potter. SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC CLATTERING KOREN: After the rehearing and` and Shane's charges were dismissed, that's when Dad and everyone started to think, 'Well, what now?' because we can't go through all that for n` You know? There's gotta be someone. If it's not Shane, there's someone else at fault. There needed to be some sort of accountability for the accident. Um, and who was actually at fault? And who was going to be charged? And who`? You know, um, and if that was going to be the case, surely Neil had lied in court, and surely other officers had either perverted the course of justice or had manipulated the judge in such a way that he couldn't understand what was truth and what was fiction. The police, from their point of view, were looking` They then realised that things were not good, and they would have to go back and reinvestigate not only the prosecution but Neil's and the other police people's involvement in that prosecution to see whether, in fact, they had committed offences. REPORTER: Constable Ford is charged with perjury after a car accident he caused at Alexandra in 2005. He simply lied, um, to protect his own position and absolve himself from blame for causing the accident, um, and blamed somebody else. And, you know, we're supposed to have trust in the police. They're s-supposed to enforce the law and uphold the law, and for a police officer to do that and, uh, set out to get somebody else convicted for an offence that they're actually responsible for strikes pretty much at the` at the heart of the justice system. There was a lot of people very angry with Neil Ford, you know? But in my view, he was let down also by his employers at the time. Part of me wanted to see him up there and pay for the last how many years that w` you know, Shane had been through and that everyone had... gone through as well, but at the same time, it was, like, 'You didn't have to be up there,' you know? It` This isn't really what should've happened either. COLIN: They also charged, um, Cassidy with, um, obstructing the course of justice. Constable Ford was convicted after a trial by jury and, um` and went to jail. SOLEMN REFLECTIVE MUSIC I used to be angry that they took a lot of my young years away from me, you know? That I should've been living life instead of hating life, but... (INHALES) I just look back at that now and, yeah, just... never go back there, you know? Just knowing that feeling. If it wasn't for the Potter family, I don't know where I'd be. Probably be in jail or else who knows? I don't see anything now but just the positive ` just on how strong that it's made me, you know? I can't go any further back than what I had already been. I think 80% or 90% of the NZ population would've simply given up and` and said, 'Well, what the hell?' You know? 'I got a $600 fine and disqualified for six months. I'll get on with my life.' But Steve really felt there had been an injustice perpetrated, which it turns out there had been, and I think his attitude was ` 'This isn't right.' If we've made a difference to his life, then it's been worth it, you know? And I think we have. I think, um, he's seen that there's people out there that care about him. My name is Shane Te Ihorangi Cribb. On the 31st of March 2006 I was convicted of careless driving causing injury and ordered to pay $18,000 reparation. I am innocent. Captions by Imogen Staines. Edited by Ingrid Lauder. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015