By Geoffrey Churchman
The list of countries that have police forces whose members do not routinely carry guns is a short one: Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Norway and New Zealand. But it seems the Jacinda government wants to remove NZ from that list.
There’s been really no need for it here because of the very low level of gun violence (see earlier posts), and there’s still no need for it. But last year’s mosque shootings by one lone lunatic visitor (possibly with an accomplice who provided some coordination assistance) presented the Jacinda government with the golden opportunity of introducing the sight of armed police to the public: all frontline police officers throughout the country were instructed by (fortunately now retired) Police Commissioner Mike Bush to carry guns while on duty for several weeks.
It seems likely to become the permanent scene before much longer.
Why? Because armed police are more intimidating, and this government has swiftly been moving NZ from a liberal democracy to an authoritarian state where political opponents and their views are not tolerated.
According to this webpage, each year about 1,100 people a year get shot dead by Police in the U.S.; dividing that by 66 translates to a population equivalent of about 16 per year in NZ.
NZ’s actual figures until last year have been nothing like that, but according to this article on the Sccop website, in the first 6 months of Bush’s Armed Response Teams (ARTs) launched by police last October, three people have been shot dead by them; doubling that would mean 6 annually, still a way short of the American statistics — but it needs to be remembered that in America, handguns are extremely widely carried by criminals, drug dealers, gang members and others. That is not the case in NZ.
According to this article on the Newshub website, these 6 months of the country’s routinely armed police officers saw them used most often for traffic stops instead of armed offenders or serious crime.
‘The six-month trial of Armed Response Teams (ARTs) was launched by police last October, with former Police Commissioner Mike Bush saying they’d be focussed on crimes that caused “significant risk”. But data obtained by Newshub Nation shows they largely did the work of normal police.’
“One of the concerns, when these teams were introduced, was they would be an introduction of armed units into routine policing by stealth, and looking at the data that’s emerged those fears seem to be realised,” says former police officer Tim McKinnel.
In the Scoop article, People Against Prisons Aotearoa spokesperson Emilie Rākete is quoted as saying: “The police are killing people who didn’t have to die. The Armed Response Team trial has given police permission to shoot first and ask questions later.”
The photo below shows what the New Normal in Jacindaland could well be: a policeman wielding a semi-automatic assault rifle (which Jacinda & Co. made illegal for everyone else last year) in April in Wellington during Lockdown with no apparant reason. We do not want to see poorly trained cops running around with guns on Rambo-style power-trips.
But wait, there’s more. Why hasn’t the Royal Commission report of Justice Sir William Young’s been tabled yet? It was finished in December 2019, as instructed, but Internal Affairs Minister, Without-a-Trace Martin, an ‘A’ graduate of the Winston Peters school of lies, deceit and chicanery, has ruled that it won’t be released until 30th April, 2020. But wait there’s more. 30th April came and went and Tracey said, ‘because of Covid, the report won’t be released until 30th July’.
The protocol is for Justice Sir Young to present his RC Inquiry report to the Governor-General, Dame Patsy Reddy. She then reads it and if approved, will stamp it with the Queens Royal Assent and then pass it to the Prime Minister. So how does Tracey control the situation? Oh yes, but wait there’s more. PM Jacinda Ardern, along with every other Political Leader of every Party, knows exactly how and why that massacre happened on 15th March 2019. They all agreed to a total veil of secrecy and a media ban being placed on what is about to be described. The veil of secrecy and media ban is still in force today.
Go back to 21st June 2013, a scandal involving the Police Vetting Service dumping 100’s of historic and hearsay files onto the ‘Public Domain’. These applied to individuals obligated to undergo annual Police Vets as terms of their employment, i.e. school teachers and taxi drivers, etc. 100’s lost their jobs and businesses because Police told their employer to ‘remove this person from contact with children, young people, etc’ based on historic allegations, in cases decades old, never investigated and held at Police National HQ’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA).
The above happened when Edward Snowden stole top secret information from the CIA/NSA Spy Base in Hawaii on 4th June 2013. On 7th June, Snowden began disseminating that info from a Hong Kong Hotel, where he was holed up, to WikiLeaks and NY Times. The USA Government notified their ‘5 Eyes’ Spy partners of this theft and warned them that Snowden may be in possession of information that could harm their ‘national security’ but could not tell their partners exactly what Snowden had stolen (they still don’t know to this day) but could include proof of mass surveillance of each countries citizens.
The NZ Spy Agency, Government Communications Security Board (GCSB) swung into action and one of their collusions was with Police National HQ’s and they jointly decided to dump the aforementioned files onto the public domain before the people named in those files, and/or their employers, read about themselves on WikiLeaks, which would cause a huge embarrassment to Police and the Government of the day (John Keys National Coalition).
Senior staff at Police HQ’s, along with IPCA, Privacy Commissioner and Chief Ombudsman, were then deluged with complaints from the victims of the scandal. They, under instructions from the State Services Commissioner and the Prime Ministers Department and every Political Party Leader, colluded to cover-up this scandal. These Government Investigative Agencies conspired to deflect complaints and eventually water them right down and dismiss then as they were instructed to do.
Police Vetting Service staff were in turmoil. Senior managers were replaced with younger and more devious Commissioned Officers who had no hesitation to lie, manipulate ‘anonymous Police informants’, and corruptly forge documents in each case to fit the allegations made about the victim who had no knowledge of this information being held by Police prior to 21st June 2013, when they lost their jobs.
A farcical ‘Review of the Police Vetting Service’ was conducted by Privacy Commissioner (John Edwards) and IPCA Chair (Judge Sir David Carruthers) and their signed report made public in September 2016 and that was nothing more than an ‘eye wash’ to shut the victims up. None of the 100’s of victims were allowed to give evidence to this farcical charade and the final report absolved Police of any wrongdoing. But of course, the victims had absolutely no knowledge of the ‘Snowden Factor’ of the cover-up and the purpose of the farcical joint OPC/IPCA report. The 2 main actors in that report, Carruthers and Edwards were both fully aware of the Snowden Factor.
About September 2017, while Senior Police staff at Police Vetting Unit were still covering up and manipulating evidence used to conceal this scandal, ‘Junior staff’ of the Police Vetting Unit approved 30 licences to individual who had been refused gun licences in Australia. 2 of those (which includes the mass murderer) went on to commit murder with those licences.
This is what your Prime Minister and her Cabinet and every other Party leader don’t want you to know. If Justice Sir William Young has done his job, then this evidence will be in his report.
Maybe just don’t do things that are “of a pedophilic nature” Brian, then you won’t have to blame others for your misfortunes. (Quote from the tribunal whereby Brian had to fight to get his taxi licence renewed)