Posts by Matthew Poole
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I can think of one thing that could lead to police officers mingling less with "general society", and that is shift work.
Very true. My observation of career fire fighters is that they often don't socialise much with "outsiders". Having a rigid shift schedule ensures that they're surrounded by people with whom they have a close bond, who're also free at odd times, and that discourages interaction outside those circles.
There's also the issue of being able to talk about your job without the other people passing judgement, positive or negative. My personal experience is that there's very much a "wow" factor associated with telling people that you're involved in that kind of job, and eventually it gets a bit tired. You don't really want to be trying to explain that, actually, the job is pretty nondescript and boring a lot of the time. Hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of terror, as they say. If you associate with others who're in the same line of work, you're spared that. -
Therefore it would be better for the police to be paranoid, than assume any raid on a home would be "routine"
As I've observed above, the police simply do not have the resources to treat every warrant execution as high-risk. High-risk means a lot of cops, all with firearms, and an incident controller who's away from the scene and keeps a strategic eye on it all. It means predetermined channels and modes of communication, assembly areas and safe forward points. It's a lot of work, and just isn't feasible for every operation. Even American cops don't treat every search warrant as a high-risk activity, and being greeted with the wrong end of a gun barrel just inside the door is much more of a risk there than it is here.
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If stolen military weapons are used in crime, the answer has to be follow Aussies lead and destroy all military weapons (& pistols too) not used by the NZDF & Police. As happened after Port Arthur.
Yes, because there's no other source of weapons in this country than the military. That'll fix it for sure.
Hint: the majority of firearms in this country are not, and never have been, in the hands of the military. Most are privately-owned. Military firearms are not easy to get one's hands on, and it's pretty rare that they show up outside official arsenals. I've heard rumours that some Maori separatists have crates of M16s and MP-5s, but never seen any real supporting evidence. It's pretty easy to get them smuggled into the country by ship, in any case, and there's just too much coastline to police effectively.
Firearms owned by individuals are a much easier target. The security is reduced, and houses are far easier to escape from than a military installation. Turning a semi-automatic rifle into a fully-automatic one isn't too difficult for someone who's got the right tools and knowledge, from everything I've read and heard. -
Oh, right, that woman in Whangarei. As I said, wouldn't be the first. As Russell said, at a distance an air rifle looks like a real one. A cop isn't going to take the time to find out if it's a .22 or an air rifle, because they could be dead before the determination is made.
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perhaps its time to pause and say a wee leavening prayer (or even bake a pavlova) for the poor addled wench taken out by policemen in whangarei, policemen who appeared not to be able to tell the diff 'twixt an airgun and a shotgun?
uh, what are you on about?
She wouldn't be the first person, even in NZ, to have been shot after presenting an airgun at an armed cop. Mr Leo at, IIRC, Helensville, holds that dubious honour I believe. He was ordered to drop what turned out to be an air pistol, instead began to point it at the armed cop, and was shot for his troubles. -
Surely a positive benefit of having sensible recreational substance laws would be that the police could divert their limited resources into investigating people who actually pose a risk of visiting real to others in their community?
Just curious, what do you think the police could've done to develop intelligence that Molenaar had firearms? Would more available bodies have made the slightest bit of difference? Unlike drugs, people don't tend to deal firearms. They can't grow them, and they're not in demand by anything like a third of the population (if figures I've seen in here about pot consumption are accurate). One of the common ways the police find tinnie houses is that they get tipped off about unusual foot traffic, or the power companies pass on word about a property that's got apparently excessive electricity consumption. Neither of those applies to a weapons hoarder.
It's all well and good to call for reforms of cannabis laws, but I haven't yet seen a single case that anything would've been the slightest bit different about what happened in Napier, other than that it wouldn't have been a pot warrant that the officers were holding. If nobody volunteered to the police that Molenaar was stashing an arsenal under his stairs, I'm completely at a loss to work out how changing pot laws would've suddenly got them that information. I really, truly do not see any confluence between the two positions, and to be honest I find it somewhat distasteful that people are making the suggestion. Snee hasn't even been buried, for crying out loud!
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Caleb, it's not going to become normal, unless it becomes normal to carry out evacuations under fire from automatic weapons. In the event that NZ society has deteriorated to such an extent, I fully expect that the police will come to some kind of lease or purchase arrangement with the Army so that they have their own LAVs and thus aren't constrained by Defence Act limitations on the use of military force in police incidents.
You're letting your paranoia get away from you. This was an extraordinary situation, requiring extraordinary measures. The LAVs weren't there to provide firepower, they were there to provide protection from it. That's not militarisation of the police, no matter how much you might think otherwise.
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Several cops mentioned to me that they were called to domestics all the time, and would be told by the controller that the resident at the house had a firearms license. They never knew what that meant.
Yes, that is a good point. But it's not escalating domestic incidents that lead to calls for firearms registries, it's tragedies such as these. Tragedies that, invariably, wouldn't have been prevented by a registry because they involve firearms that would never have been registered even if there was a legal requirement. The really dangerous firearms incidents are the ones with firearms that are owned illegally, often by persons who would never meet the "fit and proper person" requirement to hold a firearms licence in the first place.
If I thought a registry would be truly effective, and could be implemented on a reasonable time and financial frame, I'd support the idea. Reality, though, makes me consider them nothing more than exercises in political smoke-and-mirrors. Ineffective wastes of money that make the proposers look good to the electorate but actually achieve almost no improvement in the security of the society in which they operate. It's interesting that neither Australia nor Canada has had particularly high levels of gun crime, but in both countries firearms registries have been proposed as a way of reducing this minor problem. Countries with very high levels of firearms crime rarely even seriously suggest registries as a solution, never mind try and implement them.
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I understand your logic although it appears that this particular gunman was known as a collector of guns by a few people. I mean the legal radar picks him up as a drug dealer but not an illegal gun holder. Isn't it all about how consistent and reasonable your radar is?
Possibly, yes, and I'm sure the cops will be asking how it wasn't known to them that he had a personal arsenal, but I still don't see how a registry would've changed anything. He didn't have a licence, so it was totally illegal for him to own any firearms whatsoever. A registry wouldn't have changed that, and it would've been a simple matter for the police to be advised that there were firearms present in the house and then do a check to determine if there was a licensed holder living at that address. On discovering that there wasn't, they've now got evidence to get permission to search the premises, as per s61 of the Arms Act 1983.
Also, the principle firearm he used sounds like it would've fallen into the 'E' category of firearms, making it a restricted weapon, subject to registration and also not allowed to be sold without a permit from the police. So your wish was pretty much in effect, it appears, and still achieved precisely nothing. Criminals don't obey the law, as I've said before. All the nice dreams and ponies in the world won't change that. -
I do want to see greater control of firearms and ammunition.
Which is fair enough, but only if it'll actually matter a damn. Wanting something for the sake of wanting it is pure cosmetics. A registry is only useful if it's backed up with random raids of every home, office and factory in the country, to ensure that there are no unregistered firearms. Anything less is a way of pretending that everyone is law-abiding and will register their firearms.
Next to no firearms crime is committed by licensed owners, excepting the odd dubious case of self-defence, and even those are very, very rare. Almost invariably a person who commits a crime with a firearm has no licence, has never held a licence, and is thus completely under any legal radar. Nothing that can be done will change that, short of becoming a police state. Firearms can be stolen, smuggled in, or even made in a shed. There are already strict controls on the sale of firearms and ammunition, and these mostly work. Most firearms used in crimes have been stolen, not bought. A registry won't fix that.