I have no time whatsoever for co-leader of the Green Party Marama “ladies’ private part” Davidson but when it comes to the arming of the police we can find common ground with her.
When people like Marama demanded action from the government after the Christchurch terror attack it never occurred to them to worry about the path they had set both the government and the NZ police force on.
Instead, they rejoiced at law-abiding gun owners being turned into criminals at the stroke of a pen and their private property being forcibly taken off them by a government and police force that had demonised guns.
The safety they had demanded from the government and police, however, was never going to stop at disarming the law-abiding. If the police were to be able to disarm the actual criminal classes then they would need to be armed themselves. Also in this sad new world of terror attacks on New Zealand soil it was never going to be enough to rely solely on the Armed Offenders Squad. The population had demanded safety and by gum the NZ police force grabbed the opportunity to provide it with both hands!
Dozens of South Auckland residents have railed against the “Americanisation” of New Zealand’s police force, fearing the number and scope of armed groups of police officers will slowly expand until it becomes normalised.
Police announced members of the Armed Offenders Squad would be stationed in Counties Manukau, Waikato and Canterbury as Armed Response Teams, in a six-month trial to reduce response times to firearms incidents, RNZ reports.
[…] “This is absolutely a step towards the militarisation of the police in this country,” said Emilie Rakete, a founder of People Against Prisons Aotearoa.
“When we look at similar armed police patrols in other countries, we see that there is a ‘creep’ in how they’re used – from just being an emergency response to be used in some circumstances, to being used to execute routine search warrants. When that happens, we see a massive escalation in how many people are killed by the police in other countries,” she said.
R?kete said it was also undemocratic and the decision to “fundamentally” change policing in this country was made without anyone voting for the measure.
Yeah well that’s what happens when you cheer on a government that passes knee jerk gun laws that demonise guns and gun owners. The gate had been opened and the horse has bolted.
[…] One of the speakers, Julia Whaipooti, said many people did not see the police as a beacon of safety, and that having more police around will make them feel less safe.
No one seemed to have any problem with armed police outside of mosques after the terror attack. Funny how it makes people feel safer in one situation but less safe in everyday life.
The thing is that once the genie is out of the bottle it stays out. You can’t be half pregnant and now that the trial in three main centres has been initiated we will end up with either a fully armed police force in the not far distant future or the status quo.
If we don’t want our police Americanised then all of the parties are going to have to work together to stop it. This is an issue that reaches across party lines.