A policeman called Bruce stood in front of the Paeroa police station and gave a seven minute stand up press conference at 1pm yesterday. He told the reporters that three police – flak jackets on and firearms at the ready – pulled up in a police car at an address in Karangahake. He said they were responding to an emergency call of a domestic nature and had formulated a plan of sorts, knew the suspected offender was a local ratbag prone to making threats. Threats mind you, not assaults, is this guy’s MO.
He said the police officers feared for their lives from the machete-wielding, sickle-wielding 57 year old outside the house. He said this man attacked them and they feared for their lives so they shot him, dead. Were the officers cut or hurt asked the reporters. No he said. Was anyone at the address injured? No. The attacker was close though, ‘very close’ to police. He said the cops were on ‘a real emotional rollercoaster there, at this stage here we haven’t been able to speak to them.’ So the killers haven’t been spoken to after four hours but somehow he knows all this information concerning what they did and why they did it. So the police were attacked but there are no injuries. A taser ‘was available’ but could not be deployed. What incredible nonsense.
The reporters made a poor effort it must be observed, letting him avoid the questions posed, failing to follow up and re-asking questions already answered. Here we go again: police kill, police begin their cover-up by refusing to disclose the facts so as to mislead, the media don’t ask probing questions and repeat the police version, oafish thugs like Duncan Garner are on corporate media spouting presumptions and prejudice to justify the killing, the police drip feed while stories circulate about how bad the victim was – this is how it begins. Then the police stop the coroner from reporting because they drag on their pseudo investigation and the notoriously conflicted so-called Independent Police Conduct Authority can’t finish their investigation until the coroner finishes their one and so the police can grind the process of justice to a halt for months and months while the heat goes off. This is how cops get away with murder in this country, how they defeat the course of justice. This is what they are doing with the killing of a Slovakian man in Myers Park, Auckland in August last year in which the police refused to admit he was unarmed for over a month and insisted that his being killed in a hail of police bullets was a self-inflicted form of suicide – and almost a year later still no IPCA report. There is barely a single IPCA report released less than a year after the incident. The mislead and delay game is what is happening now.
Just before 9pm (yesterday, Friday the day it occured) I find a Stuff report quoting the victim’s partner, the one who made the emergency call, the one who stood with her 14 year old daughter and witnessed the killing. She says he was armed with a machete and sickle which he threw at the police car, smashing a window, and then turned back – unarmed – when he was shot by two police officers standing firing from open doors on the other side of the car. No wonder Bruce was evasive about the nature of the ‘attack’. If he admitted the cops were attacked this way by the victim then he must have been unarmed at the time. Oh dear.
So I listen to Radio Live, each bulletin, 9, 10, 11 no news on this – just the rolling propaganda mill of repeating the police line and running what Bruce had to say. So I ring up – which I have only done once before – and put them straight, ask why they havent put this news on even though the host, Karen Hay, had read part of the Stuff report just after 9. But still nothing at 12, or at 1. The pre-recorded whitewash just loops onwards with more time spent on new body armour for police dogs than on how they killed someone. The Newshub website had totally buried the story too.
The media are why cops can get away with murder, the politicians are why, the rednecks are why, the disinterested complacent lefties are why, the flakey airheads who like cats more than people are why, the booffhead rugby troglodytes focused on All Black groin strains are why. The NZ Police are getting away with murder right before our eyes. What can we do about it?
yup we’re lucky our police are unarmed. hate to see what would happen if they are armed ?
Fuck yes, to everything written here!
I’m sure it’s not difficult to shoot someone without a gun several times in the thigh when you have a repeating-fire weapon.
If police officers are not capable of immobilising someone without killing them they obviously need better training. Or different instructions.
Disturbing parallels between 21st century NZ and 1930s Germany………
You always shoot to kill, trying to shoot someone in the leg or something is just plain stupid.
If a duck-shooter can down a fast-moving bird at 20-30 metres, I’m sure someone with a shotgun can hit slow-moving human legs at 10 metres -unless they are aiming for the face or torso, of course.
At 10 metres close range, a shotgun pattern, even if using birdshot No. 8 or 10, is intense … and will blow a huge hole in a human. Don’t know what the cops use, might actually be heavy stuff, like OO buckshot or No. 2s – even more lethal and damaging.
Yes this is very disturbing now as the police look more like the SS Gestapo than they do like their former self as a friendly cop on the beat now.
Key is a monster alright.
This article makes important observations, raises valid questions and provides valid conclusions.
Is it that what we can do is encourage our own children to join the police force taking our values with them to see the culture we desire prevail?
(1) “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm” (attributed to Geo Orwell).
(2) “Ratbag” sounds almost affectionate. The deceased in this case, if you read the reports, is not well placed to be a posthumous posterboy to garner sympathy out there in middle NZ for your cause.
The reports from the MSM? That is the problem, the media only give one view & people like you who accept all they say without questioning it allow them to keep the truth hidden. The only reliable information I have (from various sources) is that the police were called, the deceased had previous interactions with the police, the deceased threw his weapons at the police, the police deny shooting him in the back. I can accept that the deceased was no angel but as the article demonstrates the media statement & subsequent inquiries are only to sanitize what happened.
Provided guns aren’t involved, it’s high time the police were obliged to have demonstrated that all non-lethal options had been extinguished before their guns are even allowed out of their car boots:
LOUDspeakers…long batons…net guns…bolas…rubber bullets…anaesthetic gun…police dogs…paintball guns…shotguns loaded with rocksalt…water canon with diluted vinegar……
Even if the gatlings do come out, do they really have to aim at the abdomen or head? These guys are supposed to be crack shots even in the heat of the moment, a .22 round in the leg will slow most assailants down enough to safely resolve the crisis.
1000% Ian Orchard
Might be best to wait for all the facts, Tim. Taking the word of family and friends, after the emotion of the event, isn’t very sensible.
In the meantime, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to police over a man wielding a machete.
True, but the point of the article is that ‘wait(ing) for all the facts’ is regularly circumvented by the police, who have a extremely vested interest in the nature of information the public receives.
The police should not be allowed to report directly to the public without oversight. At the very least in such cases their reports should be subject to check from an independent body for bias prior to release.
“‘wait(ing) for all the facts’ is regularly circumvented by the police,”
At the end of the day, the ‘facts’ do come out, the Police have no special privilege that prevents this. And neither should they.
“The police should not be allowed to report directly to the public without oversight. ”
Why not? The family are free to make whatever claims they like; surely the Police are allowed a right of reply as soon as possible? History will show who is correct. Invariably it has been the police.
At the end of the day, the ‘facts’ do come out…
… The family are free to make whatever claims they like; surely the Police are allowed a right of reply as soon as possible?
Enter the magical balance fairy.
No, it’s not OK.
It’s not OK that in the interim the police are allowed to spin and distort in the name of some sort of balance.
It’s not lying competition, although I agree with professor Greg Newbold’s observation that that is what much of the the Court process boils down to (and he was commenting on the police giving dodgy evidence).
The police should be held to very high standards, something that doesn’t happen much on day to day basis in NZ.
In all police shootings police conduct rightly comes under scrutiny. They may be culpable, so I repeat that they ought not be commenting on the case without oversight.
“It’s not OK that in the interim the police are allowed to spin and distort in the name of some sort of balance.”
That’s where we disagree. The police are ultimately subject to a robust review of their activities. The family, meanwhile, get a free ride in a compliant media. If the police are wrong, they will be exposed, as they should be.
“The police should be held to very high standards, something that doesn’t happen much on day to day basis in NZ.”
Yes. No. The police are held to very high standards every day. For the most part they carry the publics support because for the most part they do a very good job.
Appalling they shot him from inside their car the cops are now saying! But they will get away with it as they have so many times before. Remember Steven Wallace in Waitara there was never ever justice for him.
“POLICE NOW CONDUCT DRIVE BY SHOOTINGS”
NEXT WE WILL NEED BULLET PROOF VESTS JUST TO MOVE AROUND OUR COMMUNITIES!!!!!!!
MAN IN THE MIDDLE GROW UP!!
I wonder if these police are being given amphetamines for such situations. After all, all wars are run on drugs. 100,000 allied soldiers including New Zealanders were given amphetamines before the battle of Al Alamein according to the author of this book interviews on National Radio. I’d say the SAS are given them to start with.
From Vikings high on mushrooms to soldiers on speed in Vietnam… Historian Lukasz Kamienski says we have been fighting wars ‘on drugs’ for thousands of years. Bryan Crump talks with Lukasz Kamienski, author of Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/201798782/drugs-and-warfare
I’m a supporter of police, but shooting an offender in the back? If a civilian did this then they would never get away with it as a defence.
If NZ does not want to go the way of USA where cops shoot dead people as a matter of course then NZ needs to investigate properly and take away these police badges. Yep policing is a very difficult job, but allowing police to shoot people is a slippery slope to racial tension, distrust of police and further violence. We have the roast busters, Louise Nicholas, Peter Pakau and it is clear that the public expect accountability from police to keep public trust in them.
Murder/Manslaughter is Murder/Manslaughter no matter how ‘bad’ the victims is supposed to be.
1000% SAVENZ.
I CANT SEE THIS GETTING BETTER WHEN THE POLICE ARE NOW SETTING THE COMMUNITY IN THEIR HARMS WAY BY KILLING LIKE THE US COPS DO.
Take a deep breath mate. Yelling in caps won’t make it better. Just wait for the coroners report to come out. Regardless of the IPCA report the coroner can pretty much tell if the guy wa shot in the front or back.
Still waiting to see the police involved prosecuted for breaking a kids back in Northland.
“Resisting arrest”!
Not all “lefties” are complacent about police killings.
From Class Struggle June/July 2000.
“The Police Killing of Steven Wallace”
http://www.lchr.org/a/41/mj/cs33.html#Police%20Killing%20of%20Steven
I will wait for the facts too before passing judgement, the rants above are just silly.
We can assume that whilst you wait you’re happy to lap up the police line.
Yes the Police investigating the police that’s cute are you real waiting until more people get shot to death????
Tasers are so yesterday, so it seems.
Well Police will rejoice that THE HEAT WILL BE OFF THEIR BACKS NOW ORLANDO SHOOTINGS HAVE COME TO THEIR RESCUE, AND WE WILL NOW SEE MORE POLICE INDESCRIMATE SHOOTINGS AND DRIVE BY CTIZENS SHOOTINGS BY POLICE AS IT IS LESS BY NUMBER THAN POLICE INCUR.
We are living now in fear of our police now as to their examples of shooting to kill first policy now are not leading by a good outcome here.
stop shouting ya green egg
Why are police tasers ‘less available’ than hand guns?
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