Replica guns spark cop warning

BEN CAMPBELL

Spot the difference: Senior sergeant Mike McIlraith shows how difficult it is to tell apart a genuine police-issue Glock pistol and its replica.

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An upsurge in young people "mucking around" with replica guns has Papakura police worried someone will end up hurt or worse.

Senior sergeant Mike McIlraith says police have had three callouts in the past week to youths brandishing weapons in public.

The guns turned out to be replicas, he says, but police procedure is to assume they’re real.

In these callouts "it’s prudent for us to take precautions by arming ourselves" so anyone carrying replica weapons in public is putting themselves and police in real danger, he says.

"They’re probably not thinking about the risk but we have to treat it as though it’s the real thing."

Even experienced police find it difficult to distinguish replicas from real guns.

In 1997, a test asked police officers to pick a real gun from a lineup of replicas. Only three of 50 officers got it right.

A genuine police-issue 9mm Glock pistol is heavier than a replica but they are almost impossible to tell apart by sight, Mr McIlraith says.

"It has the word Glock on it and even an indent where the real gun has its serial number."

The Glock is one of "numerous" replicas around Papakura.

If someone goes out in public with a replica gun and police turn up with real ones there’s no doubt who’ll come off worse and someone could be injured or killed, Mr McIlraith says.

In 1999 police shot dead west Auckland man Eddie Leo when he pointed a replica Glock at them near Kumeu.

Several months later a teenager was arrested when he pointed a replica Glock at a passerby outside a North Shore bank.

"There’s no place for imitation weapons out in public," Mr McIlraith says.

The replica rifles and pistols are BB guns that fire air-propelled pellets and police estimate there are up to 10,000 of them in the country.

After shotguns and rifles, replica firearms are the third most common item seized by police nationwide.

- © Fairfax NZ News