John MacDonald: How I feel about armed cops after this week's shootings

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

When I first heard about the police shooting and killing someone they had actually gone to help, like most people, I wondered how the hell that could happen.

This is the shooting in Bryndwr in Christchurch overnight on Wednesday, which left a woman dead and a man critically injured.

As always happens, the armchair experts haven’t been slow in coming forward. For example, demanding to know why the police couldn’t have shot the woman in the leg, rather than taking her life.

But unless we have been in the position of a dealing with something like that —a situation where the woman had been in danger but then threatened police with a knife— we can't really criticise the police.

And can you imagine how the officer who fired those shots is feeling today?

But what I am asking is whether or not this tragedy has had any impact on my attitude towards the arming of our police.

And I can honestly say that my attitude hasn’t changed. Despite the tragic outcome, I still think our police need to be armed – in fact, more so than they are already.

You might remember the survey by the Police Association which found that 69% of police officers wanted to be armed on a regular basis. That’s more than two-thirds of our cops who said they reckon they need guns to keep themselves safe on the job.

Over the years, some people have said that arming every police officer would do more harm than good.

Here are a couple of examples: Poto Williams, when she was Police Minister, said that arming officers would “change the community’s relationship with the police”. Which I thought at the time was a load of nonsense.

And I still do, because the relationship has already changed and it’s putting the lives of our cops at risk everyday. Which is why more than two-thirds of them said in that survey that they want to be armed more regularly.

The late Chester Borrows —who was a former National MP and a former cop— was another one anti-guns for cops. I remember him saying that a general arming of the police would see more officers being shot and more civilians being shot. His view was more guns, more deaths.

But how I’ve always seen it, is that it’s very weird we have a workplace health and safety system in New Zealand that is hellbent on keeping workers safe at work by making sure they’re sitting at their desk in the right position, but we’re more than happy for police officers not to be kept as safe at work as they could or should be.

Which is why over recent years, I’ve come to think that police officers should be able to carry a pistol at all times.

And, despite the tragic events in Christchurch the other night, I still feel that way.

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