A woman claims a 10-year-old was tasered by police in Rotorua. Photo / Supplied
A woman claims a 10-year-old was tasered by police in Rotorua. Photo / Supplied
NZ Police Association president Chris Cahill has backed the officers involved in an incident which led to a 10-year-old boy being tasered in Rotorua last week after allegedly attempting to stab an officer, claiming alternative “touchy-feely stuff puts people at risk”.
“When officers are encountered with this situation they have to go through a full risk assessment... If you’ve got someone with a knife and they’re running around and they’re clearly panicking, you’re gonna have to take some action,” he told Newstalk ZB this afternoon.
Cahill said there are no rules about the age an offender must for police to use a Taser on but such factors are weighed-up when officers go through a risk assessment of the individual situation.
“A 10-year-old with a knife can still be a significant risk,” he said. “You just never know when you have someone with a knife and they’re panicky ... Trying to do all the touchy-feely stuff puts people at risk that isn’t really necessary.”
A witness to the incident alleged police were initially called because a woman was wandering the main street threatening to stab a man.
Cahill said that the end result was a positive outcome to the situation.
“The reality is, this kid has gone home pretty much unhurt, the officer has gone home to his family unhurt and no members are hurt so the end result has been a positive one,” he said.
Cahill said the age of some offenders is “a real concern and there is a pattern that has changed over the past few years that is hard to understand”.
Cahill said he has his own views on the contributions to this.
“I’ve got a real issue around the so-called ‘social’ housing or emergency housing ... It’s not creating an environment where these kids are going to prosper and as a result, we’ve seen some really ugly incidents,” he said.
Police Association president Chris Cahill. Photo / Mark Mitchell
In an earlier statement, police said they were alerted to a family harm incident outside a property on a central Rotorua street at midday last Friday, January 20.
Police alleged that when “staff arrived minutes later, a person attempted to stab one of the officers with a knife - this officer was arresting another individual at the time”.
The witness said police were trying to talk to the woman outside an emergency accommodation facility when the young boy ran out with a knife.
She said it looked like the same knife the woman had previously been holding.
“He’s waving it around at the police. They’re asking him to put it down, and talking to him, they’re not touching him, they’re just talking to him. But he’s swinging the knife around them, trying to stab them and kick them and all that.
“They were instructing him to put the knife down, put the knife down, he wasn’t listening he was still trying to go for them.”
Police said a taser was deployed toward the person with the knife but was not successful. The person was taken to hospital for assessment.
A woman claiming to be a relative of the boy made the allegation on social media and in messages to the Herald, providing a picture of a plaster on a torso and an ACC form showing a claim for a 10-year-old with the cause of injury listed as “taser fired by police”.
Police said none of the attending officers were injured and they “did an extremely professional job keeping everyone safe”.
Following further questions, police clarified the taser was “deployed against a young person, who is going through a youth process”.
Investigations into the incident continued.
Two women were arrested; one received a formal warning and the other was being referred to Te Pae Oranga - a tikanga and kaupapa Māori and restorative justice process.
