On Friday, New Zealand Police recorded its largest-ever one-day number of resignations with 12 new resignations of frontline sworn police officers.
When the decision to deploy heavy-handed bovver-boy tactics was made in the failed attempt to move the free citizens of New Zealand from the Parliamentary lawn, these honest police officers could no longer countenance the activities and orders from the top.
Expert modeller Anthony Armlong-Bones told media New Zealand Police Force officers’ willingness to comply with Trevor Mallard’s arrogant orders must be taken into account when modelling.
The New Zealand Police Force was relatively harmless at previous protests such as Ihumatao – an experience that is incorporated into his modelling, he said.
“What we saw was the ongoing violence as a factor in the latest outbreak of resignations. If we continue to get a bad scenario, and a bad scenario in our model is 1,000 to 2,000 resignations and that’s if the police stop getting bolshie with harmless citizens, the force stops working effectively.
“If we don’t stop doing what we did on Thursday, yeah we can get big numbers, we can’t expect 5,000, that doesn’t normally apply to New Zealand.”
He said treating people with respect had been vital to keeping resignation numbers low and he would be cautious in rolling that back.