Posts by Kyle Matthews
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We all got this story, but we don't get to see the footage ourselves, so we take the word of the media/Police.
I thought I saw the CCTV footage on TV of this incident. Yes, TV3 showed stills at least.
And the Herald is clearly telling their story from the footage, not the police report:
The footage shows Gurwinder Singh walking around the side of the counter and holding his arms up in the air as if trying to reason with the armed man.
As the gunman swings the weapon towards Navtej Singh behind the counter, Gurwinder Singh escapes out the back of the shop.
Moments later Navtej Singh is shot in the chest.
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Now maybe my memory is faulty but can anyone else recall in NZ a case where liquor or small store robbers waited after the robbery to have a shoot out with police ?
I'm not sure whether police had this information, but my understanding was that the robber got the money first, and then shot the shopkeeper in a psycho moment of maliciousness, seemingly for no reason at all.
Which would indicate to me that you shouldn't take your logic and apply it to a robber who shoots someone, particularly this one.
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I'm sorry, but if you cannot find it in yourself to agree that there is nothing wrong with all four of those statements then there is no room left for discussion elsewhere.
Oh thank God.
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Should the general public have an expectation that the Police will help them in an emergency, or should the general population actually be quite clear that in an emergency they are on their own and that they should not expect any help until the risk is deemed acceptable?
If the public should not expect help, fine. But it is something that would be nice to know before anyone else finds they need to rely on help that isn't likely to come.
Personally I can't say that I was ever under the impression that emergency services would come to my rescue immediately, no matter what the situation.
And I've never felt the need for a public service announcement to confirm that, it just seemed like common sense to me.
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The obvious lesson from this is that if you ever find yourself confronted with an armed offender don't for gawds sake tell the Police he has a gun. Because you'll be on your own until they feel it's 'safe' to intervene. Tell them he had a knife and they'll come busting in. Tell them he's got a gun and they'll form a perimeter.
Except for the obvious fact that a knife is a weapon, and police won't necessarily come running in blindly in that situation either.
Next question, Why aren't all cars carrying firearms if some are?
I believe this is operational procedure, in that in a normal situation, it requires the authority of a non-commissioned officer to authorise the distribution of firearms. Hence the firearms are routinely in the back of a sergeant's car.
Ok, is "front line" considered specially trained and selected, or are those cops just the first to arrive at a situation?
It's my understanding that every sworn officer, including those flying a desk, all the way up to the Commissioner, are active. Some will be out on the streets/cars, some will be in control rooms, various investigative units, pushing paper etc. The only cops that have limited powers are those on some sort of inactive list, which you can get onto through misconduct or serious lack of fitness etc.
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Housing quality? Journalistic standards? Cricket?
We complain about all of those things right here.
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And this is where your understanding points to a woeful ignorance on the part of the driving public - as if we needed any more proof that our licence testing is a joke.
Settle down I was just asking.
The information didn't come from the process of acquiring my drivers licence, it came from a traffic cop in early 1993. And it's the other half of the sentence you linked to.
Why would anyone learning to drive a car would need to learn about the speed of a completely different type of vehicle that they're not allowed to drive? So we can yell abuse at truckies when they speed?
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__There might be a perception problem around trucks/buses etc, but that's because when you get hit by a truck your car is going to end up a big mess. That doesn't mean they're more likely to be involved in accidents, or even that they cause them, just that it makes the news.__
Doesn't this also apply to SUVs?
I think up thread people provided some information about how this was a reality problem for SUVs, not just a perception problem.
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The Police Association -- and Greg O'Connor in particular -- sure don't.
I'm sure there's an interesting story to be told about his career and the internal politics in this organisation - which we don't see unlike other unions.
Most of the time when he appears in the media I just want to smack him around the head these days. Talk about a one-track line, completely inflexible.
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The fact that the police may be wonderful people doing a difficult job is neither here nor there. The issue is that they are useless. They need to either shit or get off the pot. Sure, an officer might have to make the calculation that his/her pay doesn't cover the risk of entering premises where there may still be a gunman as well as a dying man, but there would have been many people on the scene, relatives of the victim, who would have made the calculation differently.
I'm sorry Phil, that's nonsense.
The primary role of the police when there is an armed offender about is the apprehension of the offender to ensure the safety of the public. The police arrive on the scene with no knowledge of whether the offender has left the area, or if they are still around. In this situation hindsight probably says that it was just a robbery with an insane shooting, and the person has left, but for all they knew at the time it is another Aramoana and the gunman could be about to shoot more people.
The last thing they need is more people entering the area, messing up a crime scene, and putting more potential targets, and more unknowns that could be the offenders in the way. David Gray took shots at people who were trying to help his earlier victims. If that had happened we'd all be rightly asking why a civilian was allowed to enter such a dangerous place.
To say that the police aren't paid enough to rush in is nonsense. This is an offender that has used a firearm in cold blood, and if cornered by police, might possibly do so again. There is no way unarmed police should be entering that situation - it is rightly the domain of the AOS.
That's really crap for the dying victim and his family. But no one moved victims of Aramoana until it was safe to do so. And Sergeant Guthrie who went into the village by himself, with a firearm, was shot by David Gray and became another victim. And you better believe that every police officer thinks about that risk every time they got to an incident with an armed offender, their next pay packet is the last thing on their mind.