Questions the media need to ask the Police about the death of Alo Ngata in custody
Let me be clear.
I am not criticising the Police response to the tasering of Alo Ngata in Beresford street.
There are enough independent witnesses from neighbours who all universally agree Police used the required force to stop him.
We might quibble about tactics or negotiating style, but those don’t detract from the righteousness and necessity of the Police actions.
I don’t doubt their heroism or the stress that incident must have caused.
If an individual is committing violent acts, and is in the process of committing violent acts, immediate compliance is required.
That’s not the issue here.
The questions the media need to ask are these ones:
1: When Alo Ngata was in custody and was ‘resisting’ arrest, what actions did the Police take against him, to restrain him?
2: Did this possible response by the Police then lead to the deterioration of Alo Ngata’s medical condition?
3: How long was Ngata in Police custody before his medical condition began to deteriorate?
Yes I watched the report on TV and am always surprised that the district commander or whoever she was has a lot to say about this. I would have thought it her job to keep her trap shut and just let the so called ‘independent’ police complaints authority do their job. In earlier reports they said he was given CPR. In this evening’s news they said he was taken to hospital when he deteriorated.
Frankly tasering someone 4 times sounds wrong.
Despite the supposed ‘rules’ I have seen pigs at demonstrations a number of times with tasers which frankly scares the shit out of me.
MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE, SHORT COMMENT.
Those are good questions and I – like you – look forward to the answers.
Tasers were supposed to be used to prevent killing by the police using fire arms
…death by taser was never the intention of tasers
…surely the police could have used the taser once and then gone in to physically subdue the guy
From the independent (neighbors) eyewitness accounts, the young man was so volatile, none of the 4 taser deployments did anything at all. They were completely ineffective.
Why would they take a young man’s life ?? They say the taser cannot be affected but if you look at the amount of volts in the taser that the police uses is about 50,000V. I have got medical adviser with the amount of electricity running through your body CAN CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE. There was that incident in Australia where a young girl was affected with lighting which caused BRAIN DAMAGE . Like seriously the police need to take action on what they did for this man. Saying they perform CPR but basically his heart beat already stopped when he was in their care. Why ? Take him to the hospital when he was already BRAIN DAMAGE and his heart stopped. It took about more then 30mims for the doctors to get a heart beat but why take so long to bring him to the hospital.
It wasn’t mental issues.
I absolutely agree. What needs to be investigated is whether the police took care of Alo Ngata having just tasered him 4 times, and knowing that he was behaving in an abnormal manner – surely drugs or mental health was a factor here(?) In no way do I condone his actions but what is of concern here is – What really happened when the police took him back to the police station? That is what we need to know – how did police care for the offender in their custody? Did their actions (or lack of) lead to Ngata’s death?