I think that the are two reasons why arming Police as a response to rising gun violence is a really bad idea.
The first is that the majority of Police outside the Armed Offenders Squads and anti terrorist teams don’t have much gun training. You want a Police Officer to be highly trained before they are drawing weapons on members of the public.
Poorly trained cops plus guns = bad social policy.
The second reason I think arming Police as a response to rising gun violence is a bad idea is because it misses the drivers of that gun violence and if you don’t understand why it’s happening the solution might exacerbate the problem not fix it.
We are seeing a unique event in the NZ criminal underworld. Never before has an influx of a far more violent gang dynamic impacted the domestic gangs the way the forced renditions of 501s from Australia has.
Not all 501s are criminals and we urgently need to provide huge resources and wrap around services for these men who desperately need help building a life in a country they barely know.
However, a large percentage of the 501s ARE heavy, heavy criminals from the Australian underworld and they have formed syndicates to take over the local gangs.
That’s the violence we are seeing, it’s a market take over by Australian criminals prepared to use a level of violence way beyond the domestic gangs ever have.
Kiwis have been lulled into a false narrative spun by National and ACT that our gangs are the worst in the world when really they are very tame compared to the Australian professional class of violent organized crime.
What makes the 501s especially dangerous is their connections to South American Cartels who are another level of Uber violence. They get a cheaper & purer meth which buys them greater market share.
Arming Police when the driver of the gun violence is a market take over by a far more violent and invasive species of criminal isn’t a solution.
The solution is a secret sit down between the Police Intelligence Unit and all the domestic gangs to take out the 501s with the gangs giving the Police all the evidence they need for a mass syndicate take down.
Such a level of co-operation isn’t as impossible as it sounds, this Government managed to get all the domestic gangs to film a message to get all gang members vaccinated, those lines of communication could easily be used again.
The 501s and their South American Cartel links are a dangerously destabilizing influence in NZ. Working with the domestic gangs to set up the 501s and take down the new royalty of organized crime in NZ would require planning and immense strategy but would amputate a new class of dangerous criminal before they take root.
THAT would stop rising gun crime because you’d remove the violence escalator that is the 501s.
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Nevertheless, as things are at the moment the cop on the beat, every cop who is out there, is putting his or her life on the line, for the rest of us.
Yeah, it’s like every day we hear about cops being murdered! Oh wait:
https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/history-and-museum/memorial/officers-killed-criminal-acts
Turns out being a cop is actually one of the safer occupations, especially if you compare it to agriculture, forestry and construction, pro sports etc. Putting a gun in their hands will be seen as provocation by not only criminals but also the mentally unstable, those affected by alcohol/drugs etc – it will lead to a massive increase in deaths (not to mention accidental shootings) on all sides.
Kheala Well said, again. I’ve been encouraging a female supermarket manger to join the police. She is smart, hard working, great personality, and could do well under the accelerated / whatever pathways which they have for competent Maori women. I’m feeling bad about it now, especially with police being assaulted on a weekly basis because they are seen as the enemy, based on historical mistakes, insidious cherry-picking, and racism.
The cold -blooded shooting of young Constable Matthew Hunt, a lad brought up without a dad, chilled me as a parent whose children also lost their father at too young an age. The prognosis for children without fathers in their lives isn’t the best, but this young guy emerged ok, a credit to his mother, her only son, and wiped out for no good reason. We know the emotional burden which they themselves carry, they are our neighbours doing an increasingly dangerous job, and some of the hostility towards them is deranged, and comes from
haters too gutless to do the job themselves. The nicest ( and best-looking) boy in my third form class become a police officer, and by seventh form my best friend’s father was a senior police officer, and most are fine people, although some obviously under par. Politicians don’t like them, and use them as their tools, but anyone who’s experienced the police in other countries knows that they’re pretty good.
Body cams are inevitable, including to protect the police themselves, but in my lifetime I expect to see the army take over more of their functions, and if a few crooks get shot, I won’t be crying about it, and I would not now encourage anybody to become a cop.
Well said, a common sense post among the wails of the armchair warriors. Except for the last paragraph, let yourself down on that one.
The problem is the Australian gangs are now intertwined with the locals. Sure at a pawn level the clowns still all fight each other however the bosses behind the scene are in each others’ pockets.
Unfortunately the nature and frequency of gun violence in New Zealand warrants guns. You can’t have shootings every second day in Auckland and then expect Police to patrol without them. That is the equivalent of going to a gun fight with a baton. It is unfair on police and arguably in contradiction with workplace safety laws.
We have a major problem and believing we can all sit round the camp fire and sing Kumbaya is lunacy.
Correct Arming Police is not the best idea as the Crims are more likely to shoot first if they know they are being pursued by Armed Officers. They may think twice and weigh up the pro’s and con’s if they know Officers are going to seek a peaceful conclusion to the current situation. IMO.
“Working with the domestic gangs to set up the 501s and take down the new royalty of organized crime in NZ would require planning and immense strategy but would amputate a new class of dangerous criminal before they take root”
What does that mean? It reads like assisting established gangs to remove the competition. And if that is the case, how? With guns? It’s not going to be in group therapy sessions.
The immediate problem for police, and I agree with many things Mike the Lefty says is, but these guys are pulling guns on cops and each other now, right now and they don’t have the brain capacity to not pull the trigger. We don’t have the luxury of months or years of policy implementation to see if that works. It’s a ratchet effect, these fuckers have guns and they ain’t giving them up. Too hard out and too hard man for anything less nowadays.
The control of guns is lost, it’s lethal out there and you cannot expect police to just use their good looks to defuse losers with guns when they don’t have them, themselves!
X-ray. But it was suggested to me by a lawyer, that the reasons young guys pull a gun and shoot at a police officer who stops them on a routine matter, is that they think that the police are going to shoot them, so they get in and fire at them first. . I don’t expect to get shot if I’m pulled up, and I never have been, but there’s a sub-culture groomed to see the police as the enemy who are out to get them.
Others have rightly commented about the lack of police visibility in the community, and the disappearance of the community constables, some of whom did a lot of pro-active good in their local communities, and this is due to lack of funding from politicians who tend live in sheltered and sometimes privileged surroundings, divorced from social reality.
Ongoing harassment I’ve experienced could have been ameliorated by the avuncular community cop we used to have, even though my creepy harasser isn’t breaking any law. We have two or three nutters who pester females at the local mall and the shopkeepers are reluctant do anything about them; I know this because I’ve spoken with them.
The supermarket Covid security guards now hover around eg dumped charity shop donations. Great. The community constable had a Sallies’s plunderer who stole and sold online on Trade Me, charged and appear in court. She, incidentally, was an Asian lady from a “ good “ nearby street, not a cold youngster needing warm clothes. There is little police visibility now, just the sound of sirens.
This is a Government, Police Leadership and Police Association that are professional low-hanging fruit pickers though. So far on firearms law and crime management they have immediately fallen for the easy but ineffective action (Ban .22s with a magazine capacity over 10 rounds!!), rather than the hard and effective (steps such as you outline here).
They will target the law-abiding with more legislation, or hand more arms to Police, and tout their good intentions. They dont often seem to get asked if they achieve good outcomes.
Unfortunately when it comes to gangs and to firearms crime, we get legislation written by those that dont understand, passed by those that dont care.
When someone in the forestry industry is killed at work there is shoulder shrugging indifference. When there is potential for a cop to be killed at work there is a campaign to upend laws and arm them to the teeth. Maybe the safest option for the police then is to take staff from the dangerous beat and place them on covid checkpoints out of Auckland. They could show solidarity with Jacinda’s unjustified extended lockdowns (independent of health advice) in a virtuous safe space with absolutely no risk to their health from the public. Literally, no risk. Or, they could be stationed at Parliament and surrounds to catch the coke heads running the country, also known as the UK model.
501s make up less than 1% of gangs.
NZ doesn’t have a gang problem, we have a Maori problem.
I love how your post is so racist you need to hide behind a pseudonym.
The oft quoted ‘but 501s are only 2% of gangs’ makes the person sound like they have an insight which they don’t.
That’s the percentage of 501s who enter EXISTING GANGS YOU FUCKWIT!
The 501 syndicates are working amongst themselves, they aren’t joining other gangs you spectacular moron.
Martyn, I agree with most of what you said, especially the bit about training. The average cop is utterly hopeless with a firearm, regardless of training. And the police don’t have a fraction of the budget to regularly train.
Where we disagree is when you say “Kiwis have been lulled into a false narrative spun by National and ACT that our gangs are the worst in the world”. Nobody in those parties has ever said that. Instead they are saying we should have sufficient prison capacity to lock them up and sentencing rules to ensure they stay inside.
Beyond the 501s we are also seeing the confluence of the failed neoliberal experiment and covid-19. There is more desperation and distress in the community and individuals than there has been in a long time. This is likely to increase, especially as the impact of climate change intensifies.
I agree Martyn, routine arming the Police will not make them or us any safer. Additional resources to hassle the extreme gangs would provide far better outcomes. Interesting idea of working with the less extreme Ao/NZ gangs to confront oversea’s controlled ones, well worth considering. Also gang control within our prisons has to be stopped.
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