"The police have a hell of a job - especially when there might be only one or two of them against a crowd. [Being armed] makes the other parties realise that the police are a force to be reckoned with," he said.
Napier Mayor Bill Dalton, whose son is a local police officer and an Armed Offenders Squad member, said police should have the ability to be armed if they felt they needed to be.
"I know some will not want to." He said it depended on the situation.
"I think it's just a matter of using their brains."
Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule said police themselves were best placed to make the decision.
"The counter argument is that if you arm every police officer all the time, the stakes - when there's an altercation - go up dramatically."
Central Hawke's Bay Mayor Peter Butler said if he were a police officer, he would want to be armed. "If that's what they require with what goes on today I'd have no problem with it," he said.
"If I had my way, the cops and the mayors would be armed."
Police Association president Greg O'Connor said that armed incidents often arise out of the blue. "Only a firearm on the hip allows an officer to take immediate action in response to a threat to life".
Police Minister Michael Woodhouse said this week police had told him they were "satisfied with the range of tools that they've got at their disposal" to deal with serious incidents.
However, he said he accepted it was an "ongoing issue" which he would discuss with police management to ensure they remained happy with their ability to respond to such incidents.
Two Bay police officers have been shot dead and at least five others wounded in shootings on duty in Hawke's Bay in the past 25 years. On April 21, 1996, Constable Glen McKibbin was slain beside his car in a mid-morning Sunday shooting in Yarmouth Rd, Flaxmere. The gunman fled and an armed suspect was shot dead by police in a Havelock North orchard standoff after a manhunt lasting almost 10 weeks. On May 7, 2009, home cannabis grower Jan Molenaar shot dead Senior Constable Len Snee and seriously wounded two officers and one of his own friends while ordering police from his Napier property during a drugs search.
Police have been wounded in at least two other armed incidents, with two Wairoa officers wounded when a gunman leapt out of bushes and blasted at their vehicle on Mahanga Rd, Mahia Peninsula, 23 years ago; and in November 2003 when Constable Warren Smith was shot at by a motorist he stopped in Omahui Rd, Hastings.
In both cases the suspects were later found dead.
In another incident, armed man Lachan Kelly-Tumarae was shot dead by police at Omahu while apparently refusing to lay down a gun he had presented at a police officer in an early-morning incident in a suburban Napier street on March 28, 2011.
