Two heavily armed Police have patrolled a dairy shop complex in Pt England where the local population is overwhelmingly Polynesian. Hundreds of kids walk past these officers, on their way to Tamaki College.
The legacy of Christchurch massacre for the victims; most of us cannot truly comprehend.
The legacy for New Zealanders per se? Well, that’s a debatable issue.
Commissioner Bush tells us that the profile of armed police is a response to a terror threat alert which is at a high level. (NZH 26/03/19)
Two heavily armed Police have patrolled a dairy shop complex in Pt England where the local population is overwhelmingly Polynesian. Hundreds of kids walk past these officers, on their way to Tamaki College.
This police profile of vigilance is not far from the gymnasium I and many denizens of St Heliers and Kohimarama attend so there is a double whammy so to speak: Police can impress the white population too.
Question is: To whom is this belated display of overaction to a one-off lunatic, a reassuring initiative by our guardians?
How often have we viewed on foreign fields, excessive displays of armed police wandering the streets after a terror event? As I recall, UK has been very strong on this sort of, “show the public how vigilant we are “, after the event.
In recent blogs I have confined my contribution to the question of who to blame for the massacre:
Based on my experience as a former detective, AOS cop and former inspector in charge of Auckland Criminal Intelligence Section & VIP Security, it is my opinion that the GCSB in particular and to a lesser extent, police CIS in NZ and police in Australia, have much to explain.
As the dust of that horrific event begins to settle; my concern is that bureaucrats who should have been aware of Tarrant but either were not or were and did nothing, must be held accountable.
What concerns me now, is that our guardians will make a play for more and more oppressive powers. They will try (and probably succeed in may instances) to convince the more addle pated among our elected representatives, that the way to prevent another CHCH is to give them more power.
This is a false flag. As Voltaire wrote: Beware of the words “internal security,” for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.
This is a great danger to the rights New Zealanders have enshrined in various pieces of legislation and convention.
In my view, our Guardians failed and the level of failure is one of negligence. We don’t fix that with more power bequeathed to foolish people.
Ross Meurant is a former NZ Member of Parliament and before that, an inspector in the police in charge of the Auckland criminal intelligence and VIP security unit. He is the Honorary Consul for Morocco.
Ross is an international businessman and entrepreneur.
In New Zealand he is trustee and managing director of absentee Russian owned forestry and commercial property.
From 2004 he lived and worked in Zimbabwe, Russia, Czech Republic, Thailand and the Balkans.
Since 2005 Ross has established business interests in aqua culture and fisheries development – from Morocco to Syria: U.A.E and North Korea.
In 2015 Ross was prime speaker on sustainable fisheries as guest of the Moroccan government at CRANZ Montana ‘Sustainable Resources: Africa’ conference, and an official guest at the 2017 forum.
A former Member of Parliament (1987–1996) and Member and the Executive Council of New Zealand in the National government, Ross was Under Secretary (junior minister) Agriculture & Forestry; Cabinet Committee Industry & Commerce & Chair Select Committee Fisheries.
Subsequent to parliament, he owned equestrian facilities; was elected to local government as a councillor; consulted to several major fishing companies, was engaged by parliamentary services as adviser to Rt. Hon Winston Peters and emerged as a key figure in the Scampi Affair, which falsely alleged political corruption.
Prior to entering parliament, Ross had been 21 years in the police. Service included: detective on Regional Crime Squad and Drug Squad; 5 years Armed Offenders Squad, second in command of the infamous Red Squad, and commissioned officer in charge of police spies i.e. Criminal Intelligence Section and V.I.P. Security.
Ross has a bachelor degree in politics and management, a master’s degree in economics, statistics, law and policy and C.O.P’s in law.
In 2016 Ross was appointed Honorary Consul for the Kingdom of Morocco.
First time I can say I fully agree with you Ross, but well said.
Best to go about our business as normally as we can while caring for the victims. Make some changes in our own lives to get along better.
Police and security can up their game behind the scenes and with the ample powers they have already been given.
Over reacting and packing guns and jumping at shadows just gives the shooter what he wanted. It keeps the shock current. It’s also virtue signaling by the police to:
a) cover for their own failings administering firearms law (asking for firearms register be historically cancelled, possible flaws in licensing and vetting of the shooter, not responding to concerns earlier)
b)push the police long standing agenda to carry firearms
Any push by security agencies for more reach or curtailing civil liberties should be looked at very cynically.
More powers?
My understanding is that the GSCB already has the legal power to spy on News Zealanders. Everything Frank and Martyn have written has meticulously reported on all the law changes when the Nats were in power.
More powers?
What more can they possibly want? A guard in every home?
More Powers?
Why not use what they have already and keep an eye on the fascists rather than greenies, lefties, maoris, etc
Thank you Ross. The last time I had any dealings with you our actions were in Molesworth Street, Wellington,1981. I was not in police uniform.
Unfortunately our media are driven by audience attraction, The chattering class do not do not much fact checking. Does not matter. They are selling advertising time.
Who surveys the survors? Very, very good question.
Hopefully 50% of us have our sceptic sensors functing.
A good article that underscores the point that there should be sane limits on government power. Under the last two governments (yes National and Labour) the legal power of the govt to undertake surveillance on people in NZ has been extended. This mirrors what has happened in the UK and elsewhere. Next no doubt we will be seeing more armed Police and camera’s on street corners. Maybe even laws for arbitrary search.
So there is still much we can loose but really whats needed is a return to what we once had where Police and others needed a very good reason to intrude on peoples privacy and there were layers of laws to ensure these reasons were justified.
In my view that means people need to start looking for other parties to vote for and hopefully some new parties on the scene in NZ. Whether that will happen of course is anyone’s guess.
The moral is, tech can’t buy common sense or intelligence from the intelligence services.
You also have to be able to interpret tech correctly and buy the right tech for it to work.
Sadly tech and intelligence has become more about diplomacy and money than security…
From what I can work out we pretty much just give the US money to run our security services and everybody works for them under US orders and the US works for big lobbyists and big business not the people anymore!
So instead of Disney and Warner etc taking Dotcom to court and spending their money on it, they make the FBI, make the NZ security waste their resources on it… and continually break NZ law in the process!
This has been shown in the Dotcom case where from wiki..
“On 28 June 2012, High Court of New Zealand Justice Helen Winkelmann found that the warrants used to seize Dotcom’s property were illegal because they were too broad. “These categories of items were defined in such a way that they would inevitably capture within them both relevant and irrelevant material. The police acted on this authorization. The warrants could not authorize seizure of irrelevant material, and are therefore invalid.”[61] News emerged later that the Crown knew it was using the wrong order while the raid was in progress and Dotcom should have been given the chance to challenge the seizure.[62] The Crown also revealed that police had handed seized hard drives to FBI staff who copied them at the police crime lab in South Auckland and sent the copies back to the US.[62] Justice Winkelmann ruled that the handing of hard drives seized by New Zealand police in the raid to the FBI was in breach of extradition legislation, and the FBI’s removal from New Zealand of cloned data from them was unlawful.[61]”
“In November 2017, Dotcom and his former wife Mona accepted a confidential settlement from the police over the raid. The settlement came after a damages claim was filed with the High Court over the “unreasonable” use of force when the anti-terrorism Special Tactics Group raided his mansion in January 2012. Settlements have already been reached between police and Bram van der Kolk and Mathias Ortmann who were also arrested. The New Zealand Herald reported that their settlements were six-figure sums and “it is likely Dotcom would seek more as the main target in the raid”. Commenting on the settlement, Dotcom said: “We were shocked at the uncharacteristic handling of my arrest for a non-violent Internet copyright infringement charge brought by the United States, which is not even a crime in New Zealand”.[70]”
GCSB spy technology ‘went rogue’ & kept surveilling Kim Dotcom – court documents
https://www.rt.com/viral/398200-gcsb-dotcom-illegal-spying/
Even weirder that we then have ex Chinese intelligence agents in our parliament.
Maybe I’m wrong but that is the impression I keep getting is that security here is a basket case.
Even the much celebrated Willie Apiata gets little support. All our security resources seem to be wasted on pathetic big business vendettas aka the Dotcom crap. Pity they didn’t send in 70 armed defenders for Tarrent and surveil him when he was actually committing a crime against NZ!
‘I was on my own’: Willie Apiata says he, other NZ veterans got no PTSD support
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/i-was-on-my-own-willie-apiata-says-he-other-nz-veterans-got-no-ptsd-support.html
Ross – yet again I agree with you entirely. I can understand the proliferation of armed Police in Christchurch after the dreadful events of 15 March 2019 when the non-human acted out his twisted and toxic narrative and massacred so many innocent and decent people and attempted to massacre the same number again, but I am very concerned that this has become a spring-board for the uniform Police to become fully armed on a regular basis and as you rightly point out, seeing armed Police near a dairy in Pt England Auckland where a lot of Polynesian children walk by is a major cause for concern.
The GCSB and SIS have vast and intrusive powers which, as we have found out, have been misused on citizens of this country and to that extent it is how they use their powers which is the issue. White supremacist groups have been ignored while the SIS and GCSB, as part of the five eyes consortium, have targeted Muslims, mainly young Muslim men and other groups in our society – Maori and so-called radicals but really people who are passionate about a particular cause.
I fear that the result of the Commission of Enquiry that has been announced will result in a bland response along the lines of everything is fine, its business as usual. And so it will be – the Muslim community and the groups already being targeted will continue to be targeted and the vile white supremacists will morph like a cancer into a different shape and continue their hate-filled rhetoric and behaviour, and the addition of more oppressive powers for the GCSB and SIS, which is inevitable, will continue to target the Muslim community and other groups already being targeted.
Thank you once again Ross for some more reasoned common sense. What worries me the most is the memory of one of key’s late night law passing sessions, giving even more mass surveillance powers to gcsb/sis/police. One of our elected towers of intellect stated ” oh i get it, it is like skynet” and these are the people who think they will control the internet? As has been stated by many, these organisations had all the tools they needed, they were just to busy looking in the wrong places.
Totally agree 100% with this post.
It is traumatic for the victims of any crime but big attacks get so much more attention. While I understand that, it also fuels copy cat attacks…. meanwhile our neoliberal governments both left and right are turning a blind eye to increasing culture of violence/criminal activity here and seem to be actively turning a blind eye to criminals and haters moving here to live.
This is shown by the lack of government interest in Tarrent, new to this country with activity of hate on social media and gun accumulation. It would not surprise me if Tarrent was also financially supported by NZ taxpayers on benefits here while he trained for his hate crime for the last 3 years. Go NZ! sarcasm.
We welcome drug dealers, and criminals here after all, it was only a matter of time before we got a hate massacre here.
Our poor border security and laissez faire approaches to new comers (yay money, money money from visas and tourists, foreign investment, not too fussed what they are up too or if they are criminals or fraudsters) is increasing our exposure to violence and creating more victims here (our murder rate just doubled overnight for example) .
We even have to legislate for people to get time off work for family violence now! Lets just throw more money at the problem instead of solving the problem by working out why there is family violence in the NZ born population and then making sure that nobody gets to reside here who have violent or criminal intentions and thus making resources here for others less!
Also, where are the police, when people are being attacked by gangs of youths in this country. I know 2 people who have had traumatic brain injuries after being attacked by youth gangs while stealing cars.
There needs to be a bit more thought into why these youth gangs are getting worse in this country, aka the growing drug and arms trades here and what can be done to prevent it in terms of preventing the kids operating in mindless gangs in the first place or getting into drugs.
Aka much better schooling, more opportunities and most importantly well paid secure fufilling jobs! Apparently half the car crimes are just for individuals to get somewhere because our public transport system is so pathetic and expensive, many can’t afford to get around on our pathetic wages and steal cars to get home from after a night out!
I can certainly see why working a 60 hour week on minimum wages and still not having enough to get by is a disincentive to creating social mobility myself!
Also the tomorrows schools and unproven education focuses for the last 20 years have not paid off. More Kiwis are leaving school that are semi illiterate and unable to cope in the real world, turning to drugs and crime of which P manufacture is one of our growth industries here.
I get tired of hearing for example how lazy and drug addicted Kiwis including Maori and Polynesians are… meanwhile we welcome in the drugs smugglers, people traffickers and hate criminals here, in fact under our laws which don’t seem to be a priority to change, NZ is the go to place to commit crimes while gaining residency or citizenship.
We even give out government grants and have people in parliament to spread racial stereotypes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Lee
But the woke, will not be out done, with racial or discrimination stereotypes..
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/102507145/minister-for-women-julie-anne-genter-says-old-white-men-should-move-on-from-company-boards
https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/9pxtos/green_coleader_marama_davidson_tells_people_to/
https://yournz.org/2018/08/09/marama-davidson-dismays-with-vulgar-campaign/
In some cases our own politicians and woke commentators are driving the hate!
There have also been 3 landlord related murders in the last few years fuelled by politicians making landlords a scape goat for their own flawed policies.
We have also had the 2 murders related to WINZ staff also relating to homelessness.
As far as I am aware we did not used to have murder around those issues in the past. So that sounds like 5 murders related to housing already but not a murmur or a change of tone from government, and still a lot of hate talk around about landlords and WINZ staff from government and wokies.
The moral is think before you hate and maybe concentrate on our own social problems in NZ and have more thorough investigation of people living here from overseas instead of surveilling earthquake victims for big business.
NZ needs to stop attracting more dysfunctional people to live and commit crimes here and deport quickly those that do instead of giving them the right to stay here!
How can we stop white trash with their baggage coming here from Australia many are not known and therefore can be very effective in the destruction they can and will cause. Being brown I have been pulled up coming home and it really pisses me of especially when I see creeps like him getting in our country and being able to purchase guns
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