KEY POINTS:
The shooting of a man by a Christchurch police officer has reignited debate over whether frontline staff should be issued with Tasers.
Stephen Jon Bellingham, aged 37, was shot dead in the Christchurch suburb of Avonside after smashing up a flat and a car with a hammer and threatening an officer.
The shooting has sparked debate over the use of the electric shock-firing Tasers, with the Police Association calling for the weapon to be used full-time on the frontline.
A year-long trial of the 50,000-volt shock guns in Auckland and Wellington ended on August 31. Police do not expect to have the trial results before December.
Details of Wednesday night's shooting are still emerging but Police Association president Greg O'Connor has given the officer involved his full support.
"This is the situation every police officer dreads. Inevitably, armchair critics will speculate and make judgments about what could or should have been done.
"But the officer involved was the person who was there, facing the situation, who had the training and who was faced with the responsibility of actually making a decision.
"I know that officer will be feeling absolutely shattered by that experience."
New Zealand First MP Ron Mark backed the association, saying police had only a baton, pepper spray and a pistol to use in their defence when dealing with violent offenders.
Tasers would bridge the gap between pepper spray, which was ineffective on some people and situations, and the firearm.
Mr Mark said the silence from civil libertarians on the issue had been "deafening" and when police were next called to detain a violent offender, they should call on the "anti-Taser" people to make the arrest.
Green MP Keith Locke, who welcomed the end of the Taser trial, said yesterday his opinion had not changed. Although a Taser might save a life in one instance, the devices were dangerous and had been linked to deaths in the United States.
"I think it's completely wrong to use one instance as a justification for the general introduction of the Taser.
"You've got to look at the pluses and the minuses of any weapon and the minuses still outweigh the pluses.
"Just because there have been only 19 uses - actual firings - of the Taser in the year-long trial in New Zealand, I don't think that means the Taser won't kill people in the future."
Campaign Against the Taser group spokeswoman Marie Dyhrberg said the shooting did not change the group's stance on Tasers.
"We've always maintained that we are not against immobilisation devices for the police. Certainly the organisation is not advocating 'no Taser or nothing'. Our issue has always been: is the Taser itself the appropriate and safest device while still being effective, and in what circumstances should an immobilising device be used by the police as a use of force?"
