“This is what happens when you appoint underwhelming neophytes, David Campbell as Police Minister and Andrew Scipione as Commissioner.

“It’s a sign of an emasculated, rudderless police force, with systemic small-man syndrome, acting like bullies in an attempt to cover up weakness, and chronic dysfunction.”

And that’s just a taste of how Miranda Devine welcomes the very new commissioner and nearly-new minister after they managed to distinguish themselves as the prime APEC geese.

Commissioner Scipione gives the impression of a humourless, somewhat dangerous and not-very-bright control freak as he defends police heavy-handedness by declaring: “That’s the way we do business in NSW now.”

Minister Campbell also does impressions, or perhaps just an impression – a less-than-not-very-bright walrus.

Having been made to look rather silly by the Chaser team early in the APEC show, this duo proceeded to prove their stupidity by defending and being ultimately responsible for the mob of police who gang tackled 52-year-old accountant Greg McLeay for jay-walking, charged him with various offences, strip-searched him and locked him up for 22 hours without allowing him to speak to a lawyer, his wife or just about anyone except the person sharing his cell – an alleged ice addict.

That was a mistake firstly because the police should know by now it’s the doctors who are the terrorists, not accountants. They’re more your fraud-and-embezzlement types.

The bigger mistake was not appreciating ninemsn has the raw footage of much of McLeay’s arrest, including his young son watching the whole thing.

But the biggest mistake was not realising McLeay is a personal friend of the feisty Devine:

The NSW Police are incapable of stopping the real criminals — the thugs who launched the 2005 revenge attacks on Cronulla, for instance.

But they are real tough guys on the soft targets — a 52-year-old father from Neutral Bay taking his 11-year-old son for yum cha on the APEC public holiday.

Ms Devine also is a close friend of Laura Norder, somewhat on the starboard side of politics, the sort of columnist one might suspect is happy to see the greeny-ratbaggy-pinko mob cop the odd water cannon in the name of civil society. But the police APEC overkill was even too much for her, never her mate McLeay.

The accountant’s ordeal is only one easy and particularly public example of the Scipione mindset that was the single major APEC negative. There were also the passing assaults on photographers, the walloper repeatedly punching the person held down by numerous other officers of the law, the dragging away of the bloke trying to burn an American flat, never mind the general whiff of a police state about the whole proceedings and pre-emptive deprivations of liberty.

It’s a worry. It’s the NSW government. It’s the “way we do business now”.

If only they would show such strength is ridding our streets of the Critical Mass pinheads who actually do disrupt traffic, unlike the occasional jay-walker.