Posts by Matthew Poole
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Just ask DC Duncan Taylor's widow.
That's a very good point, actually. I'd forgotten about that incident. That's a perfect example of just why the police have the procedures they do and follow them so rigidly. There's uniformed blood been shed, and well inside living memory, courtesy of a person with a gun. Just as fire fighters in this country will never look at a cool store the same way again, the police will always treat with great caution the possibility of firearms being present at an incident to which they've responded.
Granted there's valid public interest in why it took them as long as it did to decide that the scene could be entered
From the time that firearms became available to the time that the ambulance officers were permitted to enter the scene was very brief. That says that the delay was largely due to the other armed incident in progress at the time the call came in, rather than general slowness to get in and check the scene once policy dictated that entry could be made.
Why's your life any more valuable than the next guy's, even if the next guy happens to be in uniform?
Seemingly precisely because he's in uniform. There seems to be a belief, as Kerre Woodham described, that putting on the blue shirt makes a police officer less worthy of continued existence than those they serve.
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the New Zealand Herald editorial on the matter
Says it all. The Herald loves ragging on the cops. Their collective understanding of policing appears to be somewhere between very little and not much, but they're quire happy to pontificate as though every journalist and editor has spent decades on the beat.
On another forum, when someone suggested that as a taxpayer I should expect the police to come charging to my rescue, I responded that I prefer that my tax dollars go to their salaries and pensions, not their department funerals. I see no reason to change that view.
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I thought the police have their vests now?
Stab vests, yes. Good against knives and screwdrivers, not so flash in the event of being shot at.
Ballistic vests are carried in cars that have firearms, but aren't routinely worn due to their bulk and impingement on movement. -
I think that most people are ignorant of that law - although I presume the professional drivers that ferry the big trucks & buses up & down the length of the country should know of it at least.
But if so, then they do willfully ignore it.
They seem to treat speed limits in general as advisory once they're out of the 'burbs. I've been passed by B-trains while doing 110 on the motorway.
In this context, though, when I talk of ignorance I'm talking about people who have car licences but don't know that the weight of the vehicle they're legally entitled to drive actually matters in regard to how fast they're allowed to go. People with licences for classes 2-5 know that their limit is 90, because it's blanket for any vehicle those classes are permitted to drive and it's in the class-specific theory questions. Class 1 is unique in having a split speed restriction for non-towing vehicles based on weight.
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Was is policy? Cock-up? Communication failure?
I'll go with policy. The situation was shots fired. At that point, firearms become a necessity for all involved. At roughly the same time as the Manurewa shooting there was an armed incident in Otahuhu, and the nearest cars with firearms were in attendance or responding. A senior non-com had to respond from the Otahuhu incident to Manurewa, according to a comment by the Police in the Herald last week. That's a significant reason for the delay. Normally police firearms are readily available in South Auckland during the night.
For all the talk about how many calls were being made to say that the offenders had departed, how many people here are familiar with the inaccuracy of human reports of stressful circumstances? Untrained people lack perspective under pressure. They exaggerate, because they lack any kind of yard-stick to apply to give a realistic account of a situation. I've heard quite minor (based on my FS experience, having attended dozens of car crashes that required extrication of trapped persons) car crashes described as "huge" or "terrible" by inexperienced persons. They don't know enough to make a dispassionate judgement, so they call it how they see it. Usually all involved in such crashes walk away, mostly completely uninjured.
When lives are at stake, it is risky to accept the word of untrained people. They may be correct, but they also may not be. If my life is on the line, I'll want the best information possible. In a situation such as this, that will be when a police officer confirms that the scene is secure.If an off-duty cop had been in the store, called 111 and identified themselves and stated that the scene was secure, and still the police had waited, then I'd be asking some hard questions. In the absence of any such scenario, though, I cannot fault the police for their actions.
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A slightly different perspective on this one, coming from experience in the Fire Service. Emergency services personnel have it drummed into them again, and again, and again, ad nauseum, that they're zero use to anyone if they get themselves seriously injured or killed. Anyone who's done even a basic first aid course has heard the same thing - your safety is paramount, don't get yourself into trouble by rushing in without evaluating the situation and minimising risks to yourself. I first heard that message when I was 11 and in St John Ambulance cadets, and have lost count of the number of times I've heard it since.
The Police had it right. They waited until they had the tools to go in and be as safe as possible in the circumstances. If you've been sent to a scene where shots have been fired, are you going to be just champing at the bit to go rushing in without a ballistic vest and a firearm? I, personally, wouldn't be. I'd want a gun in my hand, and more people with guns very nearby. My life matters to me, even if all the "keyboard commandos" (love that turn of phrase, Tom) don't give a flying fornication about my safety.
On one first aid course, run by a Station Officer from out around Maramarua/Mangatangi, the instructor recounted a car crash his brigade had been to. Car vs pole, lines down, person trapped. On arrival, they discovered that the lines were indeed down. Right across the car, in which the unresponsive-to-voice driver was clearly visible. They were also possibly live. Did they go in all gung-ho, using the various equipment available to jerry-rig a way of getting the lines clear? No, they waited. For an hour. Until the power authority confirmed that power to that sector had been shut down. Then they went in, confirmed that the person was dead, and waited for Serious Crash to do their thing. Turns out the victim died of a heart attack, which was probably why they crashed in the first place, but the rescuers didn't know that. All they knew was that their lives and safety were a higher priority. It sucks, but it's a consequence of the officers-in-charge wanting to return to the station with the same number of people with which they left.
I emailed Kerre and thanked her for her column. We need more commentators to recognise that putting on the blue uniform doesn't negate one's right to expect to go home at the end of their shift. It was all the more pleasing to see it in the Herald, which has been displaying a distinctly anti-police slant for rather a long time now.
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Why would anyone learning to drive a car would need to learn about the speed of a completely different type of vehicle that they're not allowed to drive?
But you are allowed to drive them. Class 1==GVM below 4,501kg. 90km/h limit==GVM above 3,500kg. So on your car licence you are legally allowed to drive a non-combination vehicle that's subject to a 90km/h limit on the open road. If you hire a small truck, you're probably subject to a 90km/h limit. Certainly if you hire a 3-tonne truck you're subject to a 90km/h limit, but you're still allowed to drive it with your car licence (though probably only because the hire place has gained a weight exemption from the Director of Land Transport).
It's relevant, and it's the law. As Andrew observes it's probably mostly ignored, but it is what the law says. And as I said earlier in this discussion, I get somewhat bemused when the Police ask for new enforcement/punishment powers while they don't make use of the ones they've got. I also get frustrated when people demonstrate blithe ignorance of the limitations of their licence while there's still such resistance to imposing mandatory theory testing (with powers of revocation in the event of failure) at licence renewal. Driving's not a right!
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Wow - 1 in 5 accidents causing death or injury involve trucks.
Gee, is that really surprising? Consider the forces involved. It's very ulikely that a crash between a truck and a car will be non-injury, unless it's a very, very minor nose-to-tail. I've had a car written off in a crash involving a van that, had it been between the car and a truck, could have been a "serious crash" (defined by the Police as one or more victims at status 2, which means "patient's condition is unstable" and is the step above "CPR in progress"), but was probably recorded in the police report as non-injury because none of us required treatment at the scene (as opposed to the physio one of my passengers required for his ribs a few weeks later).
Far more crashes occur between cars, but the lower mass of both involved vehicles reduces the chance of injury. A car running into a truck that weighs greater than 10T is roughly equivalent to running to a solid wall at the same speed. -
It's my understanding that 90km/hour arises from towing a trailer, and applies to my car when I tow as much as a truck with a trailer. Doesn't have anything to do with weight at all?
And this is where your understanding points to a woeful ignorance on the part of the driving public - as if we needed any more proof that our licence testing is a joke.
Class 1 licences are for rigid vehicles with a maximum gross vehicle mass of 4,500kg (ignoring the special trade vehicle exception).
However, vehicles weighing greater than 3,500kg (the old class B licence limit) are subject to a speed limit of 90km/h on the open road.You can confirm the 90km/h assertion here, which is the Road Code page on speed limits. Finding it actually took me quite a long time, which probably says more about where I expected to find the information than anything. I figured I should provide a reference, rather than just saying "It is because I say it is."
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The article linked mentions "a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe".
Those are actually heavy enough to have a maximum speed of 90km/h on the open road here. I wonder how many of the people who own them here are aware of this. I wonder how many of the cops know this and enforce it!