Training underlines officer's gun loathing

Mitchel Alatalo. Photo / Supplied

Returning to duty after being shot, Constable Mitchel Alatalo's biggest challenge was getting back into training with guns.

"It's like 'I don't know if I can do this'," the Christchurch policeman told the Herald.

"I think it's just a new-found appreciation for firearms and what they can do to you - being at the wrong end of a firearm. It just made me appreciate my loathing for firearms. But they are a necessary part of the job, unfortunately."

"It's like 'I have to do it. I love policing. If I can't do this [training], I can't be a police officer. So you just have to get up and do it'."

Mr Alatalo, 31, was shot through the thigh in July by Christopher Graeme Smith during a routine search of a suburban Christchurch home. His colleague, Senior Constable Bruce Lamb, was shot through the jaw, and police dog Gage was shot dead.

Mr Alatalo escaped the house through a window, and despite his leg wound, armed himself and stayed at his post until ordered to go to hospital.

He has been back on frontline duty since November, and his leg is healed.

"It gives me a bit of grief every now and then, but nothing that stops you from doing any work. My elbow seems to have had a bit more damage from when I landed on the ground ... from falling out of the window."

The shooting is something always in the back of his mind.

"Every now and then I will have a wee hiccup. I'll have a wee moment or I'll think about [the shooting], but you have just got to get on with it and just charge through I think. It surprises me every now and then, but it's nothing I sit there and dwell on when I come to work."

It made him appreciate his family and what he had, he said.