By Michael Laws
We have clung on to the belief like small children to Father Christmas. It has been our point of cultural difference – a demonstration that New Zealand is sane, but the rest of the world is mad. And bad. Which is why we collectively endanger our police every day by refusing to properly equip them for the task that we entrust them with. To keep us safe from all the bad people.
Except there are too many bad people these days. Evil has found us. Be they created by negligent or narcissist parenting, by drink or methamphetamine, by avarice or the anti-social malaise, we are now a country fearful of the dark. And fearful of people and places that we don't know.
When our parents say that it never used to be this way, then they are half-right. It was not in their youth, or our grandparents. You would need to go back to the bad old days of early English settlement and Maori tribal warfare to strike as dangerous a time.
We are in the most violent times since the Maori Wars. It is a fact that most of us resist rather than find unpalatable. We cling to the superstition that New Zealand is the best and safest place on earth.
The police know differently. They deal with our scum, our detritus, our drifters, the desperate and dangerous, every day. Whenever I'm tempted to judgement regards the sometimes bizarre antics of the thin blue line, I remember that I don't know, that I can't possibly appreciate, what it is to the see the worst of humanity every day. And how corrosive that must be to the soul.
But not my soul. And not yours. We pay others to risk death and damnation. In fact, we actively dissuade those we love from pursuing a career that deliberately places them in harm's way.
And harm it is. There is no safe police visit; there are no truly low-risk activities. Most police are killed, maimed or injured doing the mundane and the everyday. Whether placing road spikes or checking on a low-end cannabis supplier, whether pulling over a speeding driver or attending a domestic, each has the capacity to escalate into another police fatality. How do we know this? Because the most recent cop killings come from exactly those circumstances.
It has long been a scandal how we treat the police. A revenge, almost, for the ridiculous "perfing" policy that allowed good cops to bail for no good reason and win Lotto at the same time. Because this was such a costly exercise, the policymakers decided to save funds elsewhere.
Ad Feedback They provided police with communications that anyone with a scanner could monitor. They grudgingly provided stab-proof armour, that is so cumbersome as to be near useless. We provided Tasers, but not to everyone. We allowed them to carry guns, but in their cars. Even then only in some cars. The Navtej Singh killing and police response proved that, even in deepest, darkest South Auckland, we demand police to patrol without firearms.
But the events of this past week are the tipping point. Now even our police commissioner, the broad Howard, is conceding that the Police Association may just be right. Although he is still trapped within his headquarters' political correctness. The outgoing Broad is promising a new arms policy by Christmas. He should be promising arms. Full stop.
His reluctance may be due to a certain queasiness within the Beehive. Police Minister Judith Collins rather trapped herself last week by saying that she deferred to the commissioner on operational matters. Except for routinely arming police with holsters and Glocks. That is a political decision, not a police one.
In fact, it should be neither. The police need to be armed, now. To undertake the necessary training, of course, but be provided the equally necessary opportunity to protect themselves and protect us.
The argument that this will, somehow, escalate the arms race with the criminal classes rather misses the point. The crims are already armed. And heavily so. Plus, they are psychotic enough to use them when remotely threatened.
Better still, we let them purchase FX Monsoon airguns that provide the stopping power of a .22 regular rifle. They appear to be the weapon of choice of the drug fraternity, and no wonder: no licence, no control. That authorities – civil and police – have allowed such a loophole to be routinely exploited is just craziness. That it took murders to occur – and one of a policeman – before the public was alerted to the danger is a scandal.
I already had concerns for the police and their physical ability to protect themselves.
They are like the under-80kg rugby grade – a special preserve for skinny white boys and girls who can't foot it with the bigger behemoths. But to arm them with a can of mace and the knowledge that their Glock is safely tucked away near the wheel brace in the boot, that is to invite the mayhem that is visited upon them.
There is a reason why the rest of the world's police forces carry arms. It is called practical experience. And perhaps because their public values more their personnel.
We must have the same regard. The benign days of civil criminality are long gone.
They are emboldened by the seeming feebleness of the police and the knowledge that we insist that our thin blue line observes etiquette and pacifism at every turn.
No more. Arm the police, properly, and be done with it. Give them the tools to do their job and to keep themselves safe. And us.
Sunday Star-Times 18/7/2010