Posts by Matthew Poole
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homosexuality was deemed the most damaging harm, 8 shillings more harmful per kilo than milkbars.
What's that converted into grams of well-aged Stilton?
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Ah, that's right. The M4s are .223, not 5.56mm. My bad. Only hazy recollections of the justifications trotted out at the time. And, yes, the different types of round used is a good point. I was sure there was some kind of justification given at the time relating to the weapons the military was using, though.
So far nobody's been shot with the new rifles, have they? In fact, I don't think anyone's been shot at all since they were brought in. Be interesting to see how they perform under fire, as it were.
All the police need to be able to do is hit centre mass. They don't need to "hit a squirrel in the left nut", to borrow a phrase from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, they just have to get rounds into the largest part of a person. One advantage, and it's probably the only one, of their poor training is that they're unlikely to try Hollywood cop stuff. They'll shoot for centre mass and that's the end of it.
The dog, in hindsight, should've been left for animal control. They have people who hunt available to deal with intransigent animals. I suspect, though, that much like Shep the cops thought that shooting a dog that's in someone's back yard would be quite easy. Turns out it's not.
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Of the shooter, ya twit.
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A number of incidents have highlighted the limitations - that dog where the cop emptied a mag & missed
A competition (I think. Was someone who gets a lot more trigger time than our cops, anyway) shooter said that trying to shoot a dog that's not tied up is going to prove extremely tricky, in the wake of that incident and precisely because of people like you saying that it shows our cops are useless shots.
What's this CHC skinhead shooting?
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e.g. where a police officer once would have talked someone down, his gung-ho young colleague simply tases someone
This is certainly a concern, but as much as anything that risk comes from the fact that very few experienced officers exist anymore. It's quite normal to see sergeants, and even senior sergeants, with rectangular rather than circular number badges on their shoulders. Those badges aren't even 10 years old, which gives you some idea of just how little experience even senior non-comms have in our police. Toss in the decreased average stature of our cops, and they've hardly got intimidation-by-presence on their side.
Shep, if you want to take refining SOPs in the wake of two deaths, such that there have been none since, as "code for - unlawful killing" then you go for your life. I'd say it's exactly the opposite, which was my point. If nobody's died in seven years, after two deaths in roughly two years, that suggests that how it's used has been changed to minimise the risk of fatalities. But you keep on beating that drum if you wish.
As for the M16s, they're technically M4s.AS, amongst considerations were the usability by, shall we say, petite officers. Shotguns are hard on the body. An M4 has what appears to be (from reading online) a pretty effective recoil absorber. The semi-automatic nature of them makes them much better than a bolt-action if you need to fire multiples times in quick succession. The model 7s were proving to be a bit much for smaller officers to handle, and in the evolving climate of weapons use against police it's handy if any officer can effectively use the majority of the firearms available to them.
I seem to recall something about getting a weapon of the same calibre as the Steyers, to allow for real bulk discounts on ammunition purchases, as an additional consideration. That bang-for-buck concern again. Piggy-backing off the military's purchasing does make good budgetary sense.I agree with you about firearms training, btw. Our cops don't get enough practice time to qualify to continue holding a private pistol licence, if that was a requirement for their job, which is just scary. They fire 50 rounds a year in training. At this moment in time, that's probably sufficient given how few shots are fired by the police, but in the future it is likely to prove woefully inadequate.
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"Two deaths have occurred in NZ following use of pepper spray by police. Mentally ill Ian Horsfield, aged 66, died in 1999. Intellectually disabled Russell Hamilton, aged 32, died in July 2001."
(emphasis added) Remind me of the year again. 2008, innit? So in the last nearly seven years, with doubtless tens-of-thousands of uses of pepper spray, there hasn't been a single fatality? And pepper spray was first made available in the late 90's. So it would appear that there were two fatalities in the first few years of use, and since then SOPs have been refined and it's now relatively safe?
Dogs maul, that's all there is to it. No amount of pansy dithering with SOPs can change that. Their use is unavoidably dangerous to the person they're apprehending. By contrast pepper spray looks to be a very benign alternative, even though as Kyle has said they're not used as an either/or solution. As Kyle has also said, dogs are not an acceptable alternative for situations involving disturbed persons. Their deployment is highly traumatising, far more so than pepper spray. Being sprayed hurts, but being attacked by a dog puts a person into a primal fear situation. Which is easier to recover from, particularly if you're a person who's not quite playing with a full deck? -
If police dog training was moved to my house and my dogs were put in charge, they'd be leaping 6 foot walls after offenders before you could go woof.
Before or after you add the barbed wire and broken glass to the top of it?
Police dogs are trained to scale two-metre-high walls, but it's not difficult to make the top insurmountable to dogs and tricky for humans. -
Sorry, I didn't mean that legally they can't enter buildings. Just that they're of limited use in a house or business or pub etc. And if doors are closed, which they probably are in relation to an armed offender, the dog can't get in to get them.
There's always windows. They train for jumping through them. Not so hot on doors, but given that I know of cats that will hang off lever doorhandles to get them open I'm sure they can find ways :P
Mostly dogs are good for chasing people coming out of the house, or finding people who're hidden. Clear the house, then send in a dog to find anyone who's secreted themselves somewhere.But you're right, compared to a person dogs have very limited mobility for buildings. Even fences are a problem, despite their training.
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All weapons are open to abuse - handcuffed & peppersprayed
Distasteful as it is, that's entirely within procedure. So technically that's not abuse.
You're so hung up on the apparent safety of dogs that Kyle and I really just seem to be talking past you. People usually require medical attention, sometimes even hospitalisation, after they've been subject to the tender mercies of a police dog. Tasers usually require nothing more than a doctor checking that the "Taseree" isn't suffering heart palpitations or the like, and pepper spray mostly just gets dealt with using a wash-up kit that's kept in every frontline car. Just because dogs don't kill people (and even with Tasers death's a pretty rare event) doesn't mean they're safe. Tetanus shots, stitches, antibiotics, the list of post-bite requirements goes on. Pepper spray leaves no marks, and Tasers don't leave significant puncture wounds that are potential sites of infection.
Your "whole of Govt" thing still doesn't deal with the fact that increasing dog numbers as you desire would be horrendously expensive compared to getting Tasers. It doesn't matter how many departments are involved, there's still a requirement to give the people on the sharp end tools to do their job. What can "mental health and Maori" contribute to keeping cops safe? In the wops, a dog may be 30, 40, 90 minutes away. It may be entirely inappropriate to wait half that long to resolve a situation, but you're saying that that's precisely what should be done. I'm calling bullshit. The police are paid to resolve situations, not to sit around holding hands and singing songs while they wait for a dog to arrive.
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Dogs can't enter buildings.
Actually, they can. The Police Act 1958, s44A(a) states A police dog under the control of a police dog handler may enter and be on any place that the police dog handler may lawfully in the course of police duties enter or be upon.
As a practical matter, nobody's going to argue with a dog handler who says "I'm coming in, and so's (s)he."a whole of Govt approach might help here, rather than the cops running off 1/2 cocked.
Other than Customs and Police, which departments use dogs? Other than Police, which departments use weapons more frightening than truncheons? In both cases, the answer is "none". How would a "whole of Govt approach" help, when the requirements of the Police are utterly unique? That's like saying that purchases of stethoscopes or surgical gowns should be a "whole of Govt approach" rather than a department-by-department matter.