KEY POINTS:
It should come as no surprise that public support for routinely arming police officers has increased sharply. The survey that showed as much was conducted barely a fortnight after three high-profile and shocking killings in South Auckland.
Respondents, if not exactly baying for blood, could not fail to have been influenced by recent events when they answered the question. Perhaps more sober reflection at another time would have yielded a less striking result.
The survey, by Research New Zealand, showed that 53 per cent approved of having the police carry firearms, up from 33 per cent in 2003. Predictably, perhaps, men approved significantly more than women, but it is plain that the public appetite for an armed constabulary is keener than it used to be. The death of Sergeant Derek Wootton, struck and killed by a stolen car as he laid road spikes, would have only hardened attitudes further.
Interestingly, the views of police officers are moving in the opposite direction. In a 2003 survey of Police Association members, 64 per cent did not want, or were opposed to, the general arming of police. By 2005, that figure had risen to 69 per cent, although association president Greg O'Connor fancies that it would have dropped again since then (results of another survey are due in October). Nonetheless, police are less keen on arming police than the public is.
They have a pragmatic reason for their disinclination: officers are less afraid of being shot than they are of the public opprobrium they must endure if they use lethal force. O'Connor wonders whether this country is "mature enough" to accept that if police carry guns they will use them.
That's a view that deserves consideration, though the police will always, and properly, have to answer for their actions if they shoot someone; public and media discussion after a police shooting does not constitute a backlash.
But O'Connor's answer addresses the main question: armed police kill more people than unarmed police. Ample international research shows that when police are better armed, criminals get better armed too. Such an escalation is the last thing we need.
That said, police officers need to have at their disposal a response more decisive than pepper spray but less likely than firearms to have lethal consequences. That technology exists in the form of the Taser stun guns, which were trialled in Auckland and Wellington last year. A police report on that trial, which was due for release by last Christmas, still sits on the desk of Commissioner Howard Broad and it is improbable that it will move from there before the election.
Such a delay is, to say the least, regrettable. On average, six officers a day were assaulted in 2006 and that figure is unlikely to have declined. Many of those assaults would not have occurred if the officers concerned had had more than their bare hands and a baton to defend themselves with. Opponents of the Taser, which can but seldom does have lethal effects, need to reflect that it would be the lesser of two evils.
In the UK, where 90 per cent of officers are unarmed (and 80 per cent want to stay that way) Taser use is restricted to armed officers, but the signs are that it will be extended. Here, as there, Taser use would be a significant escalation of coercive force. The time may come for police to be fully armed. But it has not come yet.
