Editorial: Armed police not the answer

OPINION: The shooting of 28-year-old Constable Jeremy Snow, predictably, has led to renewed calls for the police to be routinely armed. Those calls should be resisted.

The details of the shooting, and who was responsible, will be determined in court. What is known is that Mr Snow appears to have been carrying out a routine check on a car when he was shot, and that his life was probably saved by the heroism of his colleagues, who dashed to where he lay and dragged him to safety.

The episode is a reminder of the high price those who form the thin blue line too often pay for doing their duty and putting themselves in danger to protect the rest of society. Mr Snow is the seventh police officer to have been shot in the past 18 months, two of them fatally. Others have been attacked with, among other things, knives, baseball bats, screwdrivers and chainsaws.

Many, notably Police Association president Greg O'Connor, believe those events mean that it is time to give police easier access to firearms.

However, that is unlikely to work. As Commissioner Howard Broad wrote in The Dominion Post soon after the fatal shooting of Senior Constable Len Snee in Napier earlier this year, "the protection offered by a firearm – particularly a pistol – is more illusory than real". He went on to say "the firearms offenders we encounter most in New Zealand are toting hunting rifles, shotguns or cut-down versions of these. A pistol is no match for that sort of firepower".

Significantly, Mr Broad also wrote of the heavy responsibility he felt when he carried a gun as a nightshift detective. Just how heavy that responsibility can be was tragically illustrated earlier this year when police accidently killed innocent bystander Halatau Naitoko, 17, during a motorway shootout. The officer who pulled the trigger said he was devastated and contemplating leaving the police as a result.

There are other steps that should be tried before the question of routinely arming police is considered. The Taser, which is still being introduced, has the potential to provide police with a non-fatal alternative to firearms. Mr Broad has also talked of armed response vehicles with small teams of specially trained officers permanently on standby, but able to carry out routine frontline duties until they are needed.

Then there is the law. Politicians should revive the recommendations of the Thorp report on firearms, commissioned in the wake of the Aramoana and Port Arthur massacres, and move to registering all firearms rather than simply licensing people to own weapons, along with a ban on semi-automatic weapons and generally tighter controls. The cry from the pro-gun lobby will be that such a move will penalise only the law-abiding because criminals will simply ignore the law, but it is clear the current system does not work.

New Zealand has a long tradition of unarmed police, a tradition that has helped shape the usually exemplary way in which officers go about their business. It is not a tradition that should be discarded.

- © Fairfax NZ News