Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Police and guns

So, police have responded to yesterday's incident, in which two police officers were shot and a police dog killed, with an immediate move to increase police access to firearms. Nothing like smearing yourself in other people's blood to get what you want - and this is something that police have wanted for a very, very long time. But its not something which is going to make them - or us - any safer.

On the first point, attacks on police with guns have fluctuated over the years. While the current police Annual Report [PDF] shows a dramatic rise in the past few years, looking further back shows that it has been this high before. In 2004/5 there were 37 assaults with firearms, in 1996/97 there were 36. In between its gone up and down, sometimes dropping to as low as 13, more usually hovering around 30. Its a basic occupational hazard of police work that people will shoot at you. The way to reduce that risk is not to arm police (which doesn't act as a deterrent, and instead gives a strong incentive to shoot first), but to reduce public access to firearms. There are changes to our firearms licensing system which would do that, which would reduce the number of guns disappearing out of the hands of licensed users and into the hands of criminals. Those changes would be costly, but I'd far prefer that to the prospect of our police routinely swaggering around with pistols on their hips.

As for the second point, we've already seen that the police can't use their guns safely. Outside the Armed Offenders Squad, training is woeful, and we've had a number of incidents where police have used firearms in highly questionable circumstances. Giving them greater access to guns will increase the number of those incidents. But the big fear is that it will lead to a shift to US-style "compliance policing", with police routinely threatening to use lethal force against the public they are supposed to be protecting in order to coerce consent. And that's not something we should tolerate in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, it looks like we have a power-grabbing Police Commissioner and an authoritarian Minister who is perfectly happy to give them whatever they want. The result will be more police shootings, and possibly more shot police. And that's not good for anybody.