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Monday, January 26, 2009

Innocent man shot and killed by police


Motorway shooting officer 'should be tried'
Former police inspector Ross Meurant says the armed offenders squad member who fired the shot that killed teenage courier driver Halatau Naitoko should be tried before a court.
A 50-year-old man at the centre of Friday's police pursuit on Auckland's Northwestern Motorway will appear in Auckland District Court today. He was released from hospital yesterday and remains in police custody. The man will face numerous charges relating to incidents during the 40-minute chase through Auckland City and west Auckland suburbs. The pursuit ended when the offender, allegedly armed with a sawn-off .22 calibre Ruger rifle got out of his vehicle and apparently tried to get into others, including Mr Naitoko's, while allegedly firing shots at police. Mr Naitoko, 17, was shot dead by police as they fired at the man. Another man at the scene was also wounded.
Mr Meurant, a former MP, told Newstalk ZB he was particularly concerned about what he called the police public relations campaign which jumped into action in the aftermath of the tragedy. He claimed the Police Association moved into overdrive to protect police at the expense of upholding the law.


Oh come on, Greg O’Conner cheerleading for the Police??? I’m shocked, I’m horrified, I'm sarcastic, let’s get off the high horse, name one time – I dare you – name one time when O’Conner WASN’T cheerleading for anything cops get accused of, remember those cops caught on tape of beating the living crap out of Rawiri Falwasser in that Whakatane police station in 2006, remember that? The beating Rawiri Falwasser received in the police cell during his psychotic episode and the nearly 15 minutes of gassing Rawiri with pepper spray while other cops hung around watching and joking until they entered the cell with shields and battons and beat him with blows to the head. What was O’Conners response to that? To decry that the Police were even charged in the first place despite the beating clearly caught on tape – so let’s not put too much mock surprise that the Police are ultra-anal-defensive, name one time that they haven’t been ultra-anal-defensive.

This tragic loss of life that has seen an innocent young dad killed has one silver lining and that is that NZers can have a real faith that the utmost scrutiny will be cast over this episode to see where responsibility lies because of the advance and creation of an actually Independent Police Complaints Authority and that the findings will not hide any evidence of any mistakes made.

What do I think about the tragic loss of life by a Police bullet? The NZ philosophy towards Policing has always been to contain a situation and then attempt to negotiate leaving the use of lethal force as a last resort. In this case we had a bloke who was being chased by cops who then opens fire on the police, at that moment the seriousness jumps to critical and the options left open to the Police are suddenly diminished by that seriousness, if someone is prepared to shoot at cops, they are prepared to do anything and as such pose an immense and immediate risk to the public. The tactic to create a moving bloke was the right one to do in an attempt to contain the situation and hopefully negotiate a way out of it.

I think an exacerbating factor in this was the fact that this bloke, while in Police pursuit, does a victory lap for Christ’s sake of the Auckland Central Police Headquarters, he’s sending a message to the cops which is suggesting that the escalation potential here is immense, and escalate it does. With the motorway blocked ahead of him and behind him, the offender clicks the other side of the motorway hasn’t been contained yet and does a runner in an attempt to hijack another vehicle and endanger another member of the public, it is only when the offender is aiming the gun at Truck driver Richard Neville that the Armed defenders squad are suddenly confronted with an armed offender who has been shooting at them now pointing his gun at a member of the public, in that moment they decide they have no option but to act immediately and in the fluid rapidness of real time actions, Halatau Naitoko tragically drives into the line of fire behind the target and is shot dead.

In such a situation, I find the Police action was not only responsible but the right one to make in a real time crises, and that this tragedy really does extends to everyone involved, the Police ultra-anal-defensive reaction with themselves held on par with the victims family of course is just the usual, ‘He ain’t self-defensively paranoid, he’s my brother’ style of NZ Policing we’ve all become tediously accustomed to.

18 Comments:

At 26/1/09 11:49 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Im shocked. Im used to disagreeing with nearly everything you write and think, but here I am agreeing with nearly every word, what am I to do???

Or is it, what has happened to you? Shouldnt you be screaming from the top of your lungs calling for the name of the Police officer so you can all can and commie bash him outside his house for just doing his job? Are you now turning right at intersections instead of left?

 
At 26/1/09 11:52 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So even before the inquiry bomber blogger claims to have access to the 'facts' and sets about describing what will inevitably become the police version of events, despite conflicting with several eyewitness reports.
Halatau Naitoko wasn't accidentally caught in the crossfire or 'the innocent victim of circumstance'. he was killed because in a typical piece of NZ Police racial profiling the armed offenders squad short on information about the offender but long on adrenaline and cop 'protect the whitefella institutions' racism took a bead on the closest unwhite youth.
The absolute worst of it, comparable to the day when english police murdered Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, was that the police spent the first 36 hours prevaricating. Even though as soon as Naitoko had been dropped the police knew that it was the result of police bullet/s and eyewitnesses galore supported that, the media went along with the farce that it would take an autopsy to find out whether the shooter was the alleged offender.
So for more than a day the mainstream media sat on it's hands and let the police PR flacks set the agenda instead of investigating and interviewing witnesses themselves, then publishing the results so police had to react rather than invent.
That gave police all the time they needed to cajole or threaten witnesses while spreading their own twisted version of what happened.

The police should be congratulated? let me see the police made a judgement that citizens may be in danger from the alleged offender ( union rep Oconnor is already tainting any jury pool by alleged the arrested man was 'p' ed out). Yet the police killed one member of the community and wounded another arresting a bloke who hadn't shot anyone.
We have seen where all these enquiries go before, nowhere. All are still obliged to use the evidence, witness interviews and forensics supplied by police. None have independent investigators, so they all arrive at the same conclusion - evil perp, poor fella copper.

NZers will find they live in a nation under siege from young unwhite citizens if they keep this up. instead of recognising there is a problem, reflected in the fact insufficient recruits can be attracted from the communities that need policing, they go offshore and recruit english whitefellas who have no idea what the needs of the communities they are tasked to police are.
In other words NZ is still locked into the same colonial model of policing as it had 150 years ago.
Successful communities are self policing ie they recruit from their own populations. If the NZ police can't do that it is a pretty good indication that the laws they enforce aren't those the community that they are policing see as important.
A huge divide has opened up between the mores which the white bourgeoisie and the ruling elite consider vital and the mores considered important by many of the communities which aren't white middle class. The fix isn't contained in more police, longer sentences, armed offenders squads or any of the other instant solutions promoted by the corporatised and foreign dominated media.
This tragedy could be a turning point where all NZers sit down and work out a just way to police their communities, but it won't. We are witnessing yet another bludgeoning of all viewpoints apart from the police good, unwhite dodgy meme, a viewpoint which dominates all dialogue on the way NZ's society can ensure everyone's values are respected.
Property rights are put above every other right unless it is Maori greenstone, or the thieves wear suits and steal millioins. Then we can't find sufficient resources to enforce the law. All the resources are busy in NZ's poorer suburbs chasing bag snatchers, teen burglars and assorted victims of capitalist greed.

 
At 26/1/09 11:52 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is the best post you've written in a long time.

 
At 26/1/09 11:56 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

o'conner is becoming a liability for the police. he lost credibility a long time ago.
A letter in today's Press decries his swaggering attitude .
It seems a lot of people are tiring of the loudmouthed yobbo

 
At 26/1/09 5:20 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

What an idiotic statement from Meurant. Lets forget about the rule of law, justice system or due process and just put the cop up and hang em without even bothering to investigate.

Good post by Bomber and agree re O'Connor.

But hell why would anyone print Meurants absolute drivel, he was last in the Police some 25 years ago has been involved in some very 'interesting' business's since then and has been arrested for impersonating a cop and assault, why oh why would they look to such a person for an opinion.

 
At 26/1/09 5:26 pm, Blogger peterquixote said...

yous Tumeke didn't get the MQ for nothing.
I see your map accurately predicts stage 5.

 
At 26/1/09 6:05 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

i am very surprised bomber: that is a very level headed, calm view of this incident. its a tragedy but there is no way in hell the cop should be tried. meurant is a fuck wit who hates the police now and will do anything/say anything to diss them.

 
At 26/1/09 9:27 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

im also agreeing with you guys, good post bomber.
you guys have to remember they dont train once they leave the academy so react just like you or i probably would, think fuck! when he turns the gun around and just point and pull the trigger as fast as they could.

 
At 26/1/09 10:16 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Old Pinko you are so wrong about this 'profiling' crap. Before you stereotype me, I'd like you to try to understand how difficult the situation was for the AOS. Direct your anger at the bowel-baby who caused this tragedy, not the officer doing his job; this is what happens when violent armed criminals go crazy on motorways- people get killed. p.s. my kids are brown & this hasn't got anything to do with ethnicity. They should to kill armed offenders even more often than they do at present.

 
At 27/1/09 8:05 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is what happens when violent armed criminals go crazy on motorways- people get killed.

Only if the AOS is involved.

This "all care no responsibility" credo of the police is a somewhat concerning.

If a police officer is not to be held accountable when they shoot an innocent person, then what incentive do they have not to shoot innocent bystanders?

Seriously I wish this kid had been killed by the offender.
Then the offender would be locked away for a long time, the public would be happy, the family would have closure, and justice would be seen to be done.

Now, nobody will be charged, the family will have no closure, and the public will wary of a police force who have no compunction at firing at innocent people.

 
At 27/1/09 11:46 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Are you going to write a post on this?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10553683

 
At 27/1/09 12:26 pm, Blogger Tim Selwyn said...

I will - thanks.

 
At 27/1/09 12:45 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If a member of the public shoots a stranger dead whilst trying to shoot at a criminal they are arrested and charged with manslaughter, if not murder. There is nothing different about this case. The police have a thankless job, but they aren't above the law. It was obvious from the very first that the fatal bullet was fired by police. Why didn't the media say so, rather than being so evasive. The New Zealand media acted like a PR front for the police.

 
At 28/1/09 12:21 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow - learnt nothing from the Urewera 17 case, eh Bomber? Still prejudging the motives and facts...

For those too simple to understand the process, when anyone kills someone else, they are normally arrested on some 'indicative' charge, bailed (or held in remand if they pose a risk), and THEN the investigation gets underway properly. Initial interviews are checked and expanded on, forensics and autopsies are done, etc. This all culminates in charges being dropped or laid and a prosecution going ahead.

This process should be followed no matter who does the shooting. Does it not concern you Bomber, that a couple of days later the same unsuspended cop could be in the Armed Offenders Squad called out to 'resolve' a hostage situation at Burger King in Manukau? If they were trigger happy the first time, imagine the adrenalin they'll be hyped on 2nd time round...

Oh, and any organisation (such as the 'Independent' Police complaints Authority) that has to include the words 'democratic' or 'independent' in their title, is neither! (Example, the Germand Democratic Republic, ie totalitarian communist East Germany).

 
At 29/1/09 12:34 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Magic bullet theory time.

How the fuck did this happen?

The perp was on top of a flat deck truck.
The cop was standing on the road or using a vehicle to lean on to aim.

Therefore, if aiming at the perp, the cop must have been aiming up. Must have been aiming 2-3m above the ground.
Aim is at the centre of bodymass, nowhere else, ever.
Hitting your target anywhere other than the chest is a miss, even if you hit them.

So where was the 17yr old?

It looks like he was in the van and a cop shot straight and not at the perp on the flat deck truck.

Or is this guy incredibly brave and did he jump him on the truck and the cops shoot the wrong guy in the struggle. No. We would have heard that loud and clear.

This wasn't an aimed shot at the perp. Any shot at the perp couldn't hit that kid who was meters away at the same level as the cops and any bullet fired at the perp, if missed would go up.

Of course I'm assuming the helicopter didn't do the shooting.

 
At 7/2/09 4:57 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

the tax payers shouldnt have to pay a single cent to compensate this family.

If I killed someone the family would not receive any bribe money payed for by the taxpayers. I would simply be locked up awaitng murder charges.

All of the offenders involved in the shooting of the father to be of two should be locked in remand until they face trial for murder.

The offenders should not be provided a lawyer either by the nz police, they should have to pay for their own defense, or apply for legal aid like every other NZer has to.

If those police are not in custody now, no other human in nz should face one more second in custody.

 
At 11/4/09 7:47 pm, Anonymous sero said...

whats happening with this, has the police managed to totally sweep this one under the carpet?

 
At 25/9/09 12:13 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I understand this was accidental however the police officer needs to face trial just like anyone else.

Its up to the judge/jury to decide guilt NOT the police.

If this situation ever happened to my son? My mission in life would be to hunt down and kill that cop!

 

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