Total recorded assaults on Police - New Zealand Police Association

New Zealand Police Association“Favours accepted, coupled with inappropriateassociations, a belief you are worth more than youare getting and that no one seems to care about aparticular problem, and you have theingredients for corruption.”The insidious creep of corruptionCrime is about opportunity.When I was a young beat cop inWellington in the 1970s, there were veryfew <strong>assaults</strong> or stand-overs in CourtenayPlace because there were no bars orpeople present after 10 p.m. So there wasa very low likelihood of either happening.Today, numerous pubs and throngs ofpeople until the wee small hours meanthere are plenty of both.Another major change to the nationalcrime scene since then is the arrival ofwell-entrenched and well-establishedorganised crime groups.Their presence opens up the opportunityfor another type of crime that didn’t reallyexist in New Zealand in the 1970s andbefore, and that’s corruption.We have groups operating in NewZealand now for whom corruption ofpublic officials is a craft honed overcenturies, particularly Asian gangs, andother more contemporary groups whoare learning the art through exposure andpractice.It’s subtle. No one ever woke up oneday and decided he or she would be acrooked official. It’s far more incrementalthan that and it’s more like wakingup and realising that you are alreadycompromised. Favours accepted, coupledwith inappropriate associations, a beliefyou are worth more than you are gettingand that no one seems to care about aparticular problem, and you have theingredients for corruption.It is naïve to think that with theexponential growth of organised crimein New Zealand on the back of the Pepidemic that attempts will not be madeto compromise Police staff and otherlaw enforcement officials, particularlyCustoms and Corrections officers.We have not yet had a major corruptioncase in Police and we fervently hope wewon’t.Someone reading this might realise theyare in danger of or may even have alreadybeen compromised. If that is the case,my strong advice is to get out of yoursituation now. It may mean telling allto your boss and being prepared to facesome consequences. It’s better thoughthan continuing on and not only bringingyour own world down in a resoundingcrash, but also that of your family and allof your Police colleagues.I may be unduly concerned aboutsomething that may never happen but,as I would be naïve to think that turningCourtenay Place into party central wouldhave no impact on offending, I wouldbe equally unworldly to believe theentrenchment of organised crime wouldnot likewise create an environment wherecorruption could take hold.I hope I’m wrong.The arming debate:Armed incident in New York brings homethe need for rifles in patrol carsThe vexed issue of arming police officersis not unique to New Zealand as isevidenced by the recent galvanising ofopinions from Albany (New York)police officers, who are calling for theimmediate issuing of rifles to frontlinepolice after an incident in January of lastyear.Here’s what The Albany Times Unionnewspaper had to say about the incident.For 40 minutes on a Saturday lastJanuary, Darrel O Brown brought terrorto a strip of I-90 as he used a modifiedAK-47 to shoot at State Police officerswho had tried to pull him over.The troopers took cover on the roadbetween exits 9 and 10 in East Greenbush.They knew Brown had them outgunned.Call for assault riflesNow, State Police Superintendent HarryCorbitt wants to outfit every State Policepatrol car in New York with a highpowered,semi-automatic assault rifle.“During that incident there were severalhundred civilians whose lives were put injeopardy because it took over 40 minutesfor us to get a rifle person to the sceneto terminate that situation, yet we hada station five minutes away,” Corbitttestified at a legislative budget hearingrecently. “If we looked at what’s plannedand what’s hoped for, we certainly wouldhave been able to terminate that situationwithin seven to 10 minutes.”A State Police sniper eventually killedBrown, a 23-year-old carjacking suspectfrom Hartford, Connecticut, who washigh on PCP (angel dust) at the time ofthe incident.TrainingThe State Police have 264 rifles -variations on the AR-15 - deployedaround the state. Corbitt said it wouldtake approximately six months to trainevery trooper and investigator doingfield work in how to use the rifles, andthat about 700 more would need to bepurchased to outfit the patrol cars.The weapons retail at $1,100 each, butCorbitt said it would cost “probably$950,000” to buy the additional riflesand conduct the necessary training. Theweapons weigh less than eight poundsand are accurate to within an inch at 100metres.State Police patrol cars currently haveshotgun racks, and troopers carryhandguns - neither of which was effectiveagainst Brown, according to TroopersPBA President Thomas Mungeer.“We have the shotguns and we havea .45-calibre,” said Mungeer, whoseorganisation has pushed for the upgradesfor some time. “Neither of those weaponswas effective against somebody who wasbent, with a rifle, on trying to shootsomebody. It was only by the grace ofGod that somebody - either a trooper ora civilian - wasn’t hurt.”April 201059