Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: When that awful thing happens

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  • Thomas Johnson,

    Well, despite the vitriol directed at Grant, it seems that the police did shoot at, and hit, the gunman on Thursday when they had an opportunity.

    A police officer fires the two shots at where he is believed to be standing and hits him. Molenaar retreats inside and there is a temporary lull in the shooting. Later in the day he tells police officers and family he was hit, but refuses to say where or the extent of the wound.

    It may be that they didn't get another chance for a clear targetting shot, which would preclude a 'ground assault' type of attack, but they were clearly interested in bringing a quick end to the siege.

    Wellington • Since Oct 2007 • 98 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    O'Connor's busy demonstrating still more blatant disregard for the facts, in this gem.

    Police Association president Greg O'Connor told Radio NZ he hoped the Napier shootings would show those opposed to Taser use that police did need more tools at their disposal.

    A Taser wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference, because they would never be used against someone carrying a firearm. In fact, one could interpret that wee flash of genius as a call to purchase some APCs for the cops.

    From the same article, though, Key is spouting some sense that will, hopefully, stick:

    "I think there is genuine concern about the widespread retainment of arms on an unregistered basis by New Zealanders, but whether it is possible to control that situation is difficult," said Mr Key.

    He said most of those with unregistered firearms were in breach of existing laws and it was difficult to see what more could be achieved.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Sofie Bribiesca,

    Sure, I just can't get my head around why a guy who lives half a century suddenly unleashes that rage.

    Roid Rage has examples of ths sort of behaviour. Jus' Sayin'

    here and there. • Since Nov 2007 • 6796 posts Report Reply

  • Just thinking,

    A S - military style semi-automatics (MSSAs) and handguns
    http://www.police.govt.nz/resources/1997/review-of-firearms-control/

    And yes I'm talking a total ban in private hands.

    It does look like a total systemic failure by successive govts and Police to follow up on their responsibility and of course the de-registar has proved itself a total failure.

    Alpers on RNZ said Aussie halved there death by gun stats & 20% of Waikato Gun 'Collectors' had ilegal weapons - unregistard MSSAs & handguns.

    The following speaker still considered unlicensed gun owners to be lazy rather than law breakers, oh dear.

    Putaringamotu • Since Apr 2009 • 1158 posts Report Reply

  • Sam F,

    Well, despite the vitriol directed at Grant, it seems that the police did shoot at, and hit, the gunman on Thursday when they had an opportunity.

    I might have been immoderate in my choice of words, but I think this actually weakens Grant's case rather than strengthens it. Seems like the police took an opportunity to end the siege, and then acted entirely reasonably to preserve everyone's safety when it didn't pan out.

    Which suggests that they're, y'know, professionals, and not action heroes somehow held back by PC lily-livered authorities a la Die Hard?

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1611 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    The police tend to self-isolate from communities. How many of you have a cop in your circle of friends, or expect to meet one at a party?

    Every day when I was a kid :)

    He hadn't exploded before that .He was an angry man , who had far too many weapons and snapped due to policing methods that let's face it fuck off a lot of peolpe off.

    Policing methods involved three unarmed police officers turning up to his house and being let in by his partner to search for drugs with a warrant. I don't think they kicked in the door. Let's keep it real, the guy snapped, as far as we know he wasn't pushed into it at all.

    Sorry but if it was legalised only one would have been there waiting for Jan, to return home from walking the dog. Holmwood ( excuse my memory on spelling his name) was only getting a bit of noxious weed, havin' a cuppa tea, chatting to the girlfriend.

    That doesn't necessarily mean that this incident wouldn't have happened another time. Apparently it was police being at his house which triggered the shooting, they might have come to his house for an entirely different reason.

    The trigger point isn't drug laws, it's a person who has a cache of firearms and starts firing at police officers under any circumstances. Take away the drug laws, you still have an unstable person with guns. That's the concern.

    I see no reason to place the right to life of a criminal firing upon police and public over the slim chance that Constable Snee might have benefited from medical treatment.

    Good to see that you've skipped the whole 'court of law', 'jury of peers', 'defend yourself against accused crimes', and appointed the police as executioners. I'm amused by the yawning gap between those people who thought that a military LAV shouldn't be used to retrieve the body, and your thoughts that we should kill the shooter to allow us to retrieve the body.

    There's no reason for the police to risk their lives by getting into a gun battle with a guy when they can wait it out for a couple of days and try and resolve it another way. Once the threat is contained, the risks of such a policy are minimal.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Thomas Johnson,

    Which suggests that they're, y'know, professionals, and not action heroes somehow held back by PC lily-livered authorities a la Die Hard?

    Agreed.

    As for the 'drug laws caused it' approach, consider the likely reaction of Molenaar if a police officer turned up at his door asking him if he had any guns on the premises.

    I can't see that his reaction to a search warrent for firearms would be any 'better' than a search warrant for drugs

    Wellington • Since Oct 2007 • 98 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Poole,

    Not to mention the innumerous other drug busts carried out in New Zealand every year, many for operations considerably larger than Molenaar's, where the cultivators and sellers somehow manage to restrain themselves from just unloading on the police.

    The position that the only reason an officer was killed is because of our harsh drug laws is frankly insulting to all concerned. Jan Molenaar did the killing, nothing else.

    Since Dec 2008 • 161 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    And yes I'm talking a total ban in private hands.

    Because, like, banning firearms is just so effective at keeping them away from those who would use them with nefarious intent. Like Jan Molenaar, for example, who as the proud holder of a well-expired firearms licence shouldn't have possessed any of the weapons he used against the police.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • A S,

    A S - military style semi-automatics (MSSAs) and handguns
    http://www.police.govt.nz/resources/1997/review-of-firearms-control/

    And yes I'm talking a total ban in private hands.

    The Thorpe report represented best thinking in 1997. The steps it recommended have not worked elsewhere.

    The Canadian registry has been abandoned as unworkable after wasting a $billion or so on it.

    The Aussie ban, has by many estimates driven between 400,000 and 600,000 semi-auto rifles underground, and not into the crusher as the aussies had intended.

    If we have similar levels of ownership to these two countries, do we want to waste that much money on something that doesn't work, or drive that many rifles into the hands of those who don't bother with legal niceties?

    I just don't see any point in wasting huge amounts of money and effort on grandstanding, when they could be put to much better use elsewhere (mental health services, more community policing, better rehab services, better support for men with anger issues etc.)

    I just want to point out, again, that our current laws in this area are by world standards outstanding, depsite anything Mr Alpers says to the contrary.

    Nothing he suggests will do anything that impacts on the actions of those who are determined to break the law regardless.

    Also worth noting, the stats he cites in Aussie should be considered in their wider context, the rates had been trending down over time before the ban anyway, making his assertions a little harder to swallow in terms of the direct causation he implies.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2007 • 269 posts Report Reply

  • ScottY,

    NZ native, you said:

    Also earlier in this thread Russell said that Jan shot the police "in cold blood" , I disagree, he did it in red hot enraged blood. He did not coldly climb a watch tower and start killing people.

    This was a prohibition crime, prohibition made the man, created the scene and gave us this result.

    ……………. And I wont pretend otherwise

    That's ridiculous. The guy flipped and started shooting people, and you want to blame drug laws? The man was armed to the teeth and would probably have snapped over something eventually. The police raid was probably just the match that lit the explosion. It probably wasn't the fuel.

    And as for the "red hot enraged blood" comment, how do you explain the fact that the siege lasted days, he was shooting at other houses, and he left boobytraps throughout his house?

    West • Since Feb 2009 • 794 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    I just want to point out, again, that our current laws in this area are by world standards outstanding, depsite anything Mr Alpers says to the contrary.

    Precisely. I'm pretty sure I've seen comments from senior police officers from other countries that amount to "Your laws are sane and workable. How do we convince our elected masters to give us something similar?"

    Gun crime involving discharged rounds is very, very unusual in this country. The laws aren't manifestly inadequate. Nobody can point to anything that a law change would've achieved to keep Molenaar from assembling his arsenal, short of random raids of any house to ensure that there are no illegal firearms. Plenty of people knew he had firearms and wasn't licensed, and not one of them told the police. He was already breaking the law, many times over. A new law wouldn't have suddenly made him think "Oh, shit, I'd better surrender my guns," and it wouldn't have suddenly made his collection illegal. It was already illegal!

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    I might have been immoderate in my choice of words, but I think this actually weakens Grant's case rather than strengthens it.

    I tried to make this point upthread. When they had a shot at Molenaar, they took it. What they didn't do was just blaze away when they didn't have a target.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    What they didn't do was just blaze away when they didn't have a target.

    And that seems to be Grant's problem. That they didn't do that was, if I understand him correctly, an unnecessary level of molly-coddling of Molenaar's safety.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Rich Lock,

    Well, despite the vitriol directed at Grant, it seems that the police did shoot at, and hit, the gunman on Thursday when they had an opportunity.

    The 'correctness' or otherwise of Grants views is entirely beside the point.

    Vitriol is being directed at him because:

    1) It is painfully and embarrasingly obvious that he has zero knowledge of painstakingly thought-out police procedures, the easily available equipment and resources, what that equipment is capable of, and what the policemen/women using that equipment are capable of.*

    2) At the time he started posting (last Friday afternoon), it was painfully and embarrasingly obvious that he had zero knowledge of the relevant facts on the ground. Several key points, such as the one you refer to, have only come out several days afterwards.

    3) Despite 1) and 2) above, this hasn't stopped him jibbering on like a P'd-up monkey about what the police 'should' or 'shouldn't' have done. He has also dismissed out of hand the direct and first-hand experience of people who do know about these things.

    Armchair warrior-fantasists living in cloud-cuckoo land with the sky faries, who inflict their opinions on those of us who are more or less engaged with the reality-based community, get on my tits.

    *I claim no great knowledge of any of these things for myself. But I'm not the one criticising the job the police are doing.

    back in the mother countr… • Since Feb 2007 • 2728 posts Report Reply

  • Sofie Bribiesca,

    I don't think they kicked in the door. Let's keep it real, the guy snapped, as far as we know he wasn't pushed into it at all.

    But as you just said that is a tactic they deploy, and being on the receiving end of exactly that ( and having to repair the door afterwards, when they got it wrong) can lead to resentment of the police.

    come to his house for an entirely different reason.

    The trigger point isn't drug laws, it's a person who has a cache of firearms and starts firing at police officers under any circumstances. Take away the drug laws, you still have an unstable person with guns. That's the concern.

    Well, one wouldn't know that to be so Kyle.I have to agree with nz native about prohibition laws.They didn't seem to work in the States and many police died as a consequence of them.

    here and there. • Since Nov 2007 • 6796 posts Report Reply

  • Shay Lambert,

    The police tend to self-isolate from communities. How many of you have a cop in your circle of friends, or expect to meet one at a party?

    Members of both my family and my wife's extended family are current or former police. One of the former said something interesting to me once. He said it wore him down, going to work and dealing with people every day who hated him.

    Incidentally, he maintained a wide and varied circle of friends - some of who were recreational users. His only request was that they didn't smoke when he was in the room.

    I dare say it's just a fact of policing, that you spend most of your day dealing with drunk, drugged, anti-social and sometimes downright dangerous people who aren't happy with anyone telling them what they can and can't do. And that, I imagine, would change your opinion of people in general, making you less inclined to venture outside the comfort of your own peer group.

    A lot of this is (like I said before) down to laws like drug prohibition not being accepted by large numbers of people.

    It would be a gross oversimplification of broad social and cultural changes over the past few decades to say that drug prohibition was the reason police are becoming more isolated from the community.

    Police are a reflection of the community as much as anything else, and like any other group, some a good, some are bad and most are somewhere in between. The only difference being most people who are bad at their jobs don't get to break out the pepper spray and long baton.

    Auckland • Since May 2009 • 78 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Parks,

    ...never mind the tone of my post.

    It wasn't just the tone, buddy, it was also the content.

    How do people know in this thread that the police doing their routine 'lets fuck up the life of a cannabis dealer/grower' were not gloating at him and letting him know he was in a heap of shit and would have his house taken of him ?????. How does anyone know the cops were not acting like arseholes ?????

    Yes, that must it: The cops, and the civilian he shot, and all the other people he shot at, were acting like arseholes. Seriously, your baseless, moronic speculation is not helping your case.

    Wellington • Since May 2007 • 1165 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Parks,

    Utter mischaracterisations and over-reactions to the most banal of comments?

    I agree that your comments are banal, Grant.

    Wellington • Since May 2007 • 1165 posts Report Reply

  • Shay Lambert,

    The Aussie ban, has by many estimates driven between 400,000 and 600,000 semi-auto rifles underground, and not into the crusher as the aussies had intended.

    And Australia is hardly a gun-violence-free utopia as a result. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,25336693-2862,00.htm

    Auckland • Since May 2009 • 78 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Incidentally, he maintained a wide and varied circle of friends - some of who were recreational users. His only request was that they didn't smoke when he was in the room.

    I was talking to my mother the last time she was up about the old pubs in Timaru. In the days of six o'clock closing, she and her boyfriend used to go and drink after hours in the same pub the cops used - everybody knew where you went to get a drink and which particular group used which particular venue. Now there's a culture change, the idea that the police could flagrantly break a (stupid) law and everyone would just accept it.

    I lived in Timaru at a particularly bad time for police-public relations, and that was twenty years ago. It was our turn to have the rampant gang problem Whanganui thinks it does now, so we got extra police shipped in - all fresh out of Cop School, and not enough experienced heads who knew the area to keep them on a leash. And still by and large my experience of dealing with the police has been positive.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    But as you just said that is a tactic they deploy, and being on the receiving end of exactly that ( and having to repair the door afterwards, when they got it wrong) can lead to resentment of the police.

    Wait. The guy snapped because sometimes when the police raid houses (but not this time) they kick in doors, and he resents that?

    I'll repeat what someone else said up thread - lots of people that cultivate and sell pot don't react to their house being searched by shooting the officers doing the searching.

    There's lots of OK responses to being caught selling pot, and maybe one of them is protesting that the law is unjust, no problem. Shooting an unarmed police officer who is just doing his job? Please.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes,

    His friends seem oddly blithe about him tipping into a homicidal rage because someone came to his house.
    On other hand, I haven't seen any evidence that the warrant executed at his house was unusual or improper in any way.
    On the other hand people have suggested in this discussion that all search warrants should be executed as if there were maximum peril.

    I consider persecuting people for a victim less crime improper but then I think oppression is a bad thing. And. hey Russell, how many hands do you have?.

    Roid Rage has examples of ths sort of behaviour. Jus' Sayin'

    That must be a really really bad case of hemorrhoids.
    Oh and Grunt. If I were going to run into the line of fire to rescue a mate the last thing I would want is to be carrying a useless lump of metal in my hand. Oh, and another thing. There seems to be a typo in your profile. Its spelt Toytown not Taiwan.

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Sofie Bribiesca,

    Wait. The guy snapped because sometimes when the police raid houses (but not this time) they kick in doors, and he resents that?

    No, I was trying to show how resentment begins with some who don't like the police. I noted further up in trying to ascertain his thought process, that something we don't know about could have triggered his action, e.g steroid rage which popped into my head after someone who does know about that mentioned his physical stature. Hell, I don't know why he flipped. I do think we should have a look at the bigger story behind our acceptance and use of weed. A large group in this country smoke a bit of weed, no intention to break laws and as Matthew so rightfully points out, the majority of responsible gun owners do so without a problem so, if the majority of pot smokers do so without a problem, lets look at the law. I know the cops are only enforcing the law.

    here and there. • Since Nov 2007 • 6796 posts Report Reply

  • Rich of Observationz,

    If I got a gun license, I could buy guns without anyone knowing what I've bought, right?

    I could then sell them to random crims, swap them for weed, bury them in stashes around the place, etc, and unless I got caught in the act nobody would be the wiser? That doesn't sound sensible to me.

    If we had a gun registry, it wouldn't fix much overnight, but people with guns (and their families after they die) would eventually decide not to risk jail (and it should be jail) for having an illegal firearm. So the number of guns would steadily decline, to the point where if you wanted an illicit weapon, you'd have to spend quite a lot of money with some serious criminal types.

    Also, a big orange tag on each registered gun would make it obvious someone was out hunting or whatever with an illegal one.

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report Reply

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