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A Christchurch constable was attacked in a brawl in central Christchurch yesterday as 30 other officers spent hours dealing with a Greenpeace protest on Lyttelton Harbour.
Police area commander for Christchurch South Inspector Malcolm Johnston said it was disappointing Greenpeace couldn't find a way of protesting that didn't tie up emergency services for so long.
The 30 officers were involved in controlling the Greenpeace action trying to stop a coal tanker leaving Lyttelton.
Meanwhile, a brawl broke out in Cashel Mall involving 10 youths while a group of 30 others looked on, The Press reported.
A lone constable on traffic duty was the only officer available to attend the fight.
Police in the southern communications centre could only watch it unfold on closed circuit television.
The constable was assaulted by a young woman, receiving minor injuries, before police back-up arrived as the incident was made a priority call.
Mr Johnston defended the police response to the Greenpeace protest, saying the 30 officers were all fully occupied at the scene.
The bulk carrier, Hellenic Sea, left for Dunkirk in France last night after the activists failed to stop it leaving Port Lyttelton,
Earlier the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior attempted to blockade the ship, loaded with 60,000 tonnes of West Coast coal from the state owned Solid Energy mines, in a dramatic climate change protest.
Police arrested six people - three on a Greenpeace inflatable for obstruction and three for unlawfully getting onto a boat - after the Greenpeace climbers who scaled the hull of the bulk carrier bolted themselves to the ship.
Police used bolt-cutters to remove the Greenpeace protesters from the ship. In one dramatic incident, a woman police officer leaped from a speedboat onto a Greenpeace dinghy and took those protesters back to shore.
Mr Johnston said further charges against those arrested had not been ruled out.
Greenpeace said later it was pleased to have highlighted the contribution New Zealand was making to climate change through coal exports.
Greenpeace campaign manager Carmen Gravatt said the protest drew attention to "double standards" in the Government's climate policy.
The protest was part of Greenpeace's Target Climate Change campaign to get the Government to reduce carbon emissions by 30 per cent by 2020.
- NZPA
