Kura lays formal complaint over armed police response to toy gun
A Christchurch kura kaupapa and whānau have laid a formal complaint with police and its independent watchdog after officers aimed rifles and Tasers at a carful of 13- to 16-year-olds over a toy gun.
A member of the public at nearby Pioneer Pools saw a 12-year-old Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Whānau Tahi student with a small toy pop gun with flashing lights – a class Secret Santa gift on the last day of kura on December 9 – which kick-started a chain of events that left the tamariki traumatised.
The kura community, unhappy with how police handled their concerns, have now laid a complaint with police and the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) over police actions on the day and the policies and practice that led to it.
A flashing toy gun is the deplorable excuse the NZ Police use to terrorise a bunch of children?
Say it ain’t so…
The seven children were minors, boys and girls, sitting in uniform in a staff member’s car, waiting for their siblings, when they were “set upon and terrorised by police officers from six or seven police cars who had assault rifles, handguns, tasers and dogs” about 2.30pm, the letter says.
The students were ordered from the car and made to kneel on the ground with their hands in the air while being shouted at. The youngest child was 13.
“Following the incident, the Police failed to make contact with us as parents, to let us know what had happened to our children that day with any concern for their health and wellbeing following this trauma, or to offer victim support.”
It demonstrated an overreach of police powers over a false report of a 20-year-old youth with a firearm, it says.
“Despite not committing any crime, our children were subjected to gross overuse of force by the Police, who also failed to address or rectify the situation once ascertaining they were innocent.”
…oh it so.
I have zero time for cops.
I love Firefighters, Nurses, Teachers, Drs, Ambulance Drivers, Rescue staff – can’t stand cops.
Who wakes up one morning and says, ‘I want to be the physical thug force of the State’.
Ugh.
Cops, that’s who.
Why did they need to scare the bejesus out of students IN UNIFORM waiting in a teachers car?
How the fuck did Police make light of the incident by saying the children “will have a story to tell”, really?
Screaming at uniformed school kids in a teachers car and demanding they kneel with they hands above their head all over a flashing toy gun?
Fuck the Police.
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Christchurch is the city where a massacre of 50 plus people occured . Being wise after the event is not a reason not to take a possible sighting of someone with a gun by the public seriously. I would like to think the colour of the person with the gun had no baring on the event that took place . I do agree the parents should have been informed after the matter was cleared up as no doubt the children would have been dramatized,but apart from that I would say job well done .
While it might be hard to tell the difference between “The seven children were minors, boys and girls, sitting in uniform in a staff member’s car” & an adult male dressed in camouflage military clothing with a military rifle you would hope that our police could do their job without jumping to conclusions not based on real evidence. We need the police to help society function & while Martyn is a bit hard on them my experience with them (a couple of speed camera tickets 55 km in a 50 km limit, I got arrested once when visiting my friend in prison & I said I wanted to go home instead of submitting to a drug search) has me thinking they are not our friends & if I as a church-going law-abiding person can feel that way then it is easy to see how some parts of society do not like them.
Trevor. Yep, kudos to the Christchurch cops responding expeditiously to reports of what could have been signposting another terrible massacre.
Teenagers playing with kiddie’s toy guns ? They’re more likely to be fooling around with paintballs, and if the youngest was 13 years old, they may not have been obviously “a bunch of children” anyway; that age group could just as easily look like adults or politicians. Better to err on the side of caution. A little balance is called for here.
“Despite not committing any crime, our children were subjected to gross overuse of force by the Police, who also failed to address or rectify the situation once ascertaining they were innocent.”
I take that as meaning that no form of apology, debriefing nor sympathy was subsequently extended by police toward the children.
I have zero sympathy for the kids. Other than it sounds like the adults that are supervising them are useless.
As kids we all learned the rules about guns and that included toy guns.
Nothing to see here more on
Boris Agree. Police now expected to go around explaining themselves to the parents of ‘children’ with toy guns is absurd; nor do they have the people power or resources.
Just wait until Police shoot some Maori kid with a toy, will you gun fear merchants be happy then?
Helen Beck. Young Constable Matthew Hunt, the only son of a single mother, was shot dead by a Maori shooter, on a routine traffic stop. Looks like Matthew Hunt’s killer simply saw police officers in uniform as the enemy.
Positing the police as such, is not a healthy or desirable narrative, more so when the New Zealand police are pretty good compared to the police in other ostensibly quite civilised countries. Every time something untoward occurs with police in the USA, one can predict a backlash against our own police force here, simply because people are stupid, and it is all part of the global ‘divide and rule’ dynamic.
The police have previously (early 2000’s) shot and killed a teenager with a toy gun.
The “toy” gun in question was indistinguishable from a real gun. The guy in question pointed the toy gun at the police refused to drop it and was shot…
But we were more sensible back then and no one gave a fuck
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