Posts by Kyle Matthews
-
I sometimes struggle to relate to NZers who have not traveled much, or are boastful of travel, or who view the OE as some kind of status symbol.
I suspect it will be one of my life's regrets that I missed the OE. I became a father before I finished at university, and now I'm very tied down here in Dunedin. I like to travel, but it only gets to happen now in short occasional spurts.
That being said, I probably learnt as much as a parent, just different things.
-
I'm sure you're right. Whatever the charge is, the important part to me is that justice is seen to be done, by being done in open court - not in a backroom.
I don't think any decision will be made in a back room. There will be a police investigation of the incident, focusing on whether any charges should be laid against officers. That will be reviewed at a senior level, and by the police legal section.
The police will release their findings and front up at a press conference. Then I'd imagine it would probably also go to a crown solicitor, who is independent from the police. I can't really see any back room, sounds very public.
An apparent lack of care cost an innocent person their life in this instance.
Apparent lack of care implies if you're careful enough, you'll always hit your target. Which is unrealistic in a lot of the circumstances that AOS officers face. Given that the person was pursued for some time, police obviously took some care about what they were doing before they opened fire.
It might just be "when guns are fired, occasionally bystanders get hurt, no matter how hard you try to prevent it".
I'm completely happy to do that. We're not talking about a lot of staff, so the cost won't be great - even if we end up sending them off to train in the States (or whichever country produces the most skilled AOS type officers).
You don't want to send them to the states at all. My father went on FBI training once there, and they did a shoot/don't shoot series of scenarios. The international cops were amazed at just how often the American cops chose 'shoot' in situations that they never would have. There's nothing wrong with our AOS staff, they rate very highly internationally, but they're only add-ons, not full time tactical units like they have some places in the world.
It is quite a few staff - I think there's about about AOS units, so its well over two hundred officers. And firearms training is only a small part of their job, and their AOS job is only a small part of their normal job as police officers. Even if it was a day a month on training, that's at 10 cops you have to find to replace those on training duties. For a unit that has decades of almost perfect service?
And I've never argued against this. The law allows me to use lethal force as well.
Just never against, you know, innocent bystanders.
You missed my point. There are laws - one in particular - that applies to police. So saying "they should be treated the same as everyone else" is incorrect. They aren't the same as everyone else, there is a law which lists a bunch of ways in which they're different. So a comparison with a civilian isn't valid, as the same rules don't apply.
That's not the problem. The problem is they shot the wrong guy. Which ISN'T one of the powers we let them have.
The police (and you, apparently) need to get their head around the fact that when they get it sufficiently wrong, they answer to us.
It's not illegal to accidentally shot someone. It's illegal to murder, commit manslaughter, discharge a firearm outside of certain conditions, act irresponsibly with a firearm etc. Any decision to prosecute the police officer, will work with what it's illegal to do. Accidentally shooting someone while confronting an armed offender actually isn't illegal. With good reason, because accidents are sometimes just that, accidents.
This is an unprecented circumstance, I'm not sure that they're qualified to make the decision - unless the facts make it incredibly bleeding obvious that the officer in question really had no other choice.
What about the circumstances makes the IPCA suddenly unqualified? They're an independent body acting under statute.
-
Someone had been needed, and he'd valiantly rushed in with no thought to his safety, or the effect of his lack of headgear on possible future underwear contracts.
Heh. You're funny. You should write stuff and post it somewhere.
-
The point is we should not "criminalise" sections of society to guarantee someones free lunch.
I need to keep reminding myself why this discussion on here is a complete waste of time, from both sides. Thanks for that.
-
I think part of what brings NZers home is that we have a strong national identity which doesn't get broken overseas very much. I had a partner move to live with me in NZ from California, and the only thing she missed was the weather and her family.
Yet Kiwis overseas miss dozens of things about New Zealand. We attach labels to them like vegemite, toffee cops, decent coffee, pohutakawa in bloom, swimming at a favourite beach etc, but what we're missing is the wholeness of the place. The casual lifestyle, the environment, the people, family, the way it feels. All the things we grew up with that are very strongly ingrained.
-
There was one "eye witness" report in the paper of the offender barrelling through a roadblock while 2 police officers "chatted".
Sort of Dukes of Hazard / Gumball Rallyesque was the picture painted.
I sincerely hope that wasn't the case
Just reading your description of what the eye witness said should resolve that.
I mean, if you were manning a roadblock, and a car came barrelling through, would you sit around chatting?
At the very least you'd be getting the fuck out the way, having a chitchat to your partner would be the last thing on your mind. The reporter should think about what he's reporting before publishing it.
Your point that paper targets don't move or shoot back isn't lost on me,but if I can hit a running target through trees with a piece-of-shit rented paintball gun I'd never even held before 5 minutes ago, a trained experienced marksman should be able to hit ANYTHING you ask him to.
I think a comparison with playing paintball, and having to shoot and possibly kill someone, aren't really valid. There's just a few more factors in play when you've pursued an offender for an hour, they have a gun, you fear for your own safety, and yet you have to go and protect the public. You've probably been on trigger edge for a number of minutes, and you've just got a sudden order to shoot the offender.
AOS members are no more trained marksmen/women than any other police officer, which is not much. Police get a few paid hours on the range a year. AOS do some specialist training with their weapon, but it's still not much. Any more than that is on their own time. If we want expert shots in the police, we should pay for more of their time to go on shooting practice. We don't, so we get police officers who are average shots.
Despite all these factors, compare the number of NZ police officers who have been killed in the line of duty (numerous, including a bunch that have been shot), with the total number of innocent bystanders shot in their history (up until this week, none, now one).
And I think I/S is probably right about this - anyone else would be put through the process of going to court - the police would say "let's just let the courts decide" so to do anything different in this situation is hypocritical.
If these people don't suffer any of the same legal repercussions we do when they get things wrong, where is their incentive to do better?
That's silly. Police have certain powers which they use in carrying out their duty. If every time a police officer shoots someone as part of their duty they get prosecuted, there's going to be a lot less police officers willing to arm themselves when they need to. You're sure as hell going to find no volunteers for AOS duty. This is the job where at a moment's notice you get put on a plane and sent to hunt for some whackjob like David Gray, armed to the teeth and already killed a dozen people. It's not exactly family friendly.
The same principle could be applied to a police officer restraining someone while arresting them. For an ordinary civilian, that restraint would be assault. Are we going to prosecute every technical assault that a police officer commits to find the few who have gone over the top?
The law allows police officers to use lethal force under certain conditions. The police need to use all applicable laws when they consider whether or not to prosecute, including the Police Act. What would be the point of prosecuting when the police officer was acting legally?
The public needs to get their head around the fact that sometimes the police are going to have to shoot people, and that's the end of it. The PCA do an investigation, the police officer is cleared, and we move on.
We can then have a lot more confidence that when police officers end up being prosecuted in court, that they've actually done something wrong rather than being put through the ringer for appearance's sake.
-
If there comes a device that can make as many copies of something that the original becomes worthless as a tangible piece of property then that's life. Get over it and get a proper job.
See, you lost it there.
I like good music, and if takes people getting paid some money to work full time for the world to have good music, I'm in favour of that.
We'd be a lesser world if all musicians got 'proper jobs'.
-
Uh, yes. But what I really miss is test cricket.
Heh. You might be on your own with that 15 GB up/down load.
Cameron vs Tua is surely a local fight being hyped above what it would be elsewhere, because it's a couple of local boys fighting at home.
Neither of them have a serious chance at a major title (I lose track of how many there are these days). Cameron might get a fight, but it'll be as one-sided as Tua vs Lewis, surely.
-
As a matter of interest, I copied my comments above to Poneke and 30 minutes later I was locked - permanently, I hope - out of his blog.
I followed the link and it required login. So maybe he's done it universally? Or some accident has happened.
-
why did the police not take down the offender earlier when they had the chance?
They won't shoot an armed offender just because they have a gun. They'll only do it once he presents the weapon and is looking likely to use it on someone. Maybe this is the first time he actually pointed the gun at someone and looked likely to use it.
Having fired a few rounds from a police-esque Glock 9mm (at a pistol club as part of a stag do... long story), I have absolutely no surprise that the police failed to hit the suspect standing on an erratically moving flatbed truck.
AOS carry Glocks, but they'd have been using their Bushmaster rifles for this I'd imagine. They'd only use their Glocks for an incident which made the rifles impractical. The rifles are more accurate, and more likely to achieve the desired result.
The racial conspiracies that have floated around I find pretty rude to be honest. This is the first innocent bystander killed by the NZ police, is it not just possible that it's chance that he happens to not be white? It's not like the Northwestern motorway is an exclusively whites only area.
The unit commander would have given the order to shoot the offender, I'm dubious that the thought going through his head at the time was "it's ok, there's only a brown kid 10 metres behind him".