via aucklandnz.com
Newstalk ZB reports
The death of a tourist at Auckland’s Hunua Falls has prompted another safety review at the popular site.
A 20-year-old Indian man fell into the water and died after losing his footing.
Hunua Ranges Regional Park senior ranger Wayne Carlson says Auckland Council has already worked hard on safety at this site, as there have been several other deaths.
A friend has asked me to spread the word and solicit votes for Warrington Surf Lifesaving Club, I’d appreciate your votes and a blog post would be even better:
BP is running a nationwide competition for Surf Life Saving, where an IRB (Inflatable Rescue boat) is the prize for the club with the most votes. Warrington Surf Club was leading the votes, since a campaign was kick started by Columba College, after the incident at Purakunui, when the IRB from their club was used.
The boats are worth $25,000 and for a small club like Warrington, this would mean lots of raffles, sausages sizzles and quiz nights to raise the money to buy one. Read more »
The Police Association has renewed its calls for “guns on hips” after a rifle was allegedly aimed at a female officer in the Bay of Plenty early yesterday morning.
The officer had been responding to a report of suspicious activity in Katikati when she spotted a man near an intersection, police said.
When she stopped to speak to him, he dropped bags he was carrying and is alleged to have swung a rifle toward her.
The officer left immediately and called for back up, before armed offenders squad members were deployed in the area.
A 20-year-old man was arrested and yesterday appeared in Tauranga District Court on charges including burglary and using a firearm against a law enforcement officer.
I have no problem with arming the Police, but if the Police are to be armed then I also believe that suitably trained citizens should also be allowed to similarly armed. After all if you start arming state authorities with out similar rights passing to citizens then you run the very real risk fo the citizenry being able to be suppressed through fear and intimidation buy those same authorities.
A second point would also be that criminals already have and use firearms and the Police simply can;t be everywhere, thereby leaving unarmed citizens at risk. If the risk is great for the police then surely the risk is greater for citizens.
I am not saying that we should be allowed tio willy-nilly carry firearms…I am saying the with training and certification and appropriate club membership then this should be allowed.
I find it ironic that Mr Martyn Bradbury snivels about there being not enough Police on Queen Street.
He said that years ago police would be out in force dealing with anyone causing trouble.
“I used to watch the old school police coming in with the paddy wagon, the pushy-shove type of police. But in the last six months they’ve dissipated overnight.
“There are a lot of foot patrols during the day, but after 8pm you don’t see them like you used to.”
However, police say they are out in force and have dedicated significant resources to covering the worst areas in the CBD.
Is this the same snivelly Martyn Bradbury who constantly posts anti-police propaganda as represented in the image on the linked post?
Martyn “DBD” Bradbury better hope that the cops don’t remember his anti-police tirades and decided that wee Martyn can be left to his own devices when confronted with scum on Queen Street.
Judith Collins talks about an article in The New Republic about crime in New York:
This is worth reading. The New York experience is mirrored in New Zealand over the last 3 years. Policing turned around and the crime rate has dropped to 1982 levels. The prison population, despite our increased penalties for violent, recidivist offenders, has fallen. South Auckland, which was known as “the mean streets” by the media, has turned around. It’s not because of the Lefties, it’s because of the Police and the fact that they stopped having to apologise for doing their jobs. Prevention First in Policing and Policing Excellence are making a lasting difference to many families and communities.
Now that Judith has fixed the Police perhaps she might like to undo the liberal damage in the Courts system.
TVNZ has launched a new ad for their new season promos.
They are so detached from reality they don’t realise the stupidity of someone running through a forest with a lit safety flare.
This is now the height of the risky forest fire season.
Further more he is holding an emergency distress smoke flare which is a signal for distress.
Is this a reflection of TVNZ’s current financial situation.
A few seconds of complete irresponsibility…both in using a pyrotechnic device in a forest and utilising a distress flare for fun instead of its intended purpose.
Yesterday I looked at the pay differential between Teachers and the lazy, overpaid wharfies. Some pointed out that wharfies have extremely dangerous jobs and hence the larger pay. They clearly haven’t taught year one in a South Auckland primary school let alone Year 10. However since danger is now the bench mark you couldn’t really get a more dangerous job than as a Police Officer.
CareersNZ tells me that Police pay rates are:
Pay varies, but during training police officer recruits earn $32,619 a year (total package $36,149). New graduates from Police College earn $47,600 a year, plus other benefits (total package $53,305). Salaries increase over time and police in higher ranks, such as sergeants, earn more than this.
According to the 2006 Census, police officers earned an average of $55,900 a year and worked an average of 43 hours per week. This includes full and part-time workers.
For that amount of pay they too also work rosters and are on call pretty their entire working lives. For the privilege of $55,900 per annum they get assaulted, stabbed, shot at, and sometimes run over and killed.
Wharfies on the other hand get full medical insurance benefits for their entire family, $91,000 per annum and only have to work 28 hours in every 40 hours rostered. They get to drive cranes and trucks and forklifts and hoists…but no one shoots at them, no one stabs them, no one bites them, no one bashes them for tuning up to sort a domestic. There really is no comparison is there.
The people we rely on to protect us the most earn about half what a wharfie earns, I don’t think that is acceptable do you?
Who should be paid more
Total Voters: 541
Loading ...The year is but 4 days old and Judith Collins has shown that she is continuing where she left off.
“I get tired of commentators who sit in their ivory towers telling the police what they should do and who live in areas where they’ve never had to confront real crime.
“Anybody who is so moronic to think that someone fleeing police is not criminal activity needs their heads read. Do they think dangerous driving is not criminal activity?
“Police have had years of getting really abused for doing their job and, frankly, I think the public is behind the police and they’re getting sick of the police taking a beating every time the police go and do their job.
“The public realise that police just can’t stand by and let dangerous drivers take over the roads.”
That was in response to suggestions that the Police policy with regard to fleeing drivers should be loosened to stop organ donors criminals trying to flee from Police.
Instead both the Police Association and their Minister are in agreement and there should be zero tolerance. For those who don’t get dead the punishment should be that they be locked up.
The trick now though will be to get the panty-waists in the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary to agree, though knowing this minister I don’t think that will be a problem.
Perhaps though we could also introduce the Mugs in the News concept and start with fleeing drivers as a trial.
UPDATE: It seems the Minister is more in tune with public sentiment that the drop-kick in charge at Justice.
In my previous post I talked about citizens defending themselves, and while I was away in the bush there was yet another case of our Police are being attacked with weapons.
Two police officers ran for their lives when a routine callout resulted in a man allegedly chasing them with a metre-long samurai sword.
The officers were responding to reports of a man lying naked and drunk on the front lawn of an Otara property.
The incident comes after four separate attacks on New Zealand police officers this month – two involving machetes.
Police Commissioner Howard Broad suggested the machete assaults could be copycat attacks.
Two things are abundantly clear.
Firstly that criminals think that it is now a valid response to interest in them from the constabulary is for them to attack them with sharp, lethal instruments. The liberal panty-waists like Simon Power and his ilk will of course think the solution is for them to pass a law banning sharp weapons and making it illegal to attack Police. They ignore the fact that criminals don’t follow laws and in some respects we already have those laws in place. Banning sharp weapons will further dis-arm the general, law-abiding population, allowing criminals to have even more control over them. The answer is actually to arm our Police and stop pretending wer are living in the crime free fantasy land that inhabits Simon Power‘s and other panty-waists minds.
The second thing that we need to understand here is that if criminals are quite prepared to attack Police officers then they of course are completely willing to similarly attack a largely unarmed population without out fear of retribution or injury. Ordinary citizens are left to call on the Police for protection when it is abundantly clear that the Police are ill-equipped to defend even themselves.
The hard questions need to be asked and politicians need to step up or get out of the way.
Of course what is not mentioned is the underlying cause of all this mayhem. I bet dollars to a knob of goat-sh*t that methamphetamine abuse is the common link in all of these attacks. With long-term use the ability to reason and rationalise is destroyed…that is why you get these nutters going psycho on the Police with weapons…they have lost the ability to reason. They also know that mostly the Police are not equipped to deal with such attacks. Arming the Police would firstly protect the officers, and secondly provide a necessarily scary deterrent to shock even the most P-addled criminal into thinking twice about taking a knife to a gunfight.
The pinko panty-waists will now say that criminals will simply carry guns. Newflash…they already are…and guess what? They don’t have licences and aren’t vetted and sure as hell don’t keep their weapons safely locked away. All that only happens with law abiding citizens.
After the vicious cowardly attack on Senior Constable Bruce Mellor, people are rightly thinking that our cops should carry guns as a matter or course not as an exception. The criminals, as we can see daily, are already armed, it is only the feeble of mind that can’t see that. It is actually now a health and safety issue that our police are properly armed.
There aren’t many good arguments for having an unarmed police force. One argument is that you end up losing officers who have to shoot scumbags who seek other career opportunites, and that is bad, losing the good officers. Or suicidal people who want to go out by “death by police” which is bad also, for the police officers that have to deal with it. Other than those two, there is no good reason for stopping police from carrying whatever weapon they need to ensure they go home safe at the end of their shift.
The problem is a small number of do-gooders whinge like crazy any time the police do anything, blaming society, the Treaty of Waitangi, a bad up bringing or some other reason for some moron needing to be filled with lead or given 50,000 volts.
The sensible approach is to challenge these whinging do-gooders, like Brian Rudman, to run for office in a nice seat like Papakura where they can put their views up against those of the current police minister, and see whether the population agrees with them. That should demonstrate how out of touch they are.
We need to arm our police and scale back the scrutiny of shooting incidents. The mandatory enquiry that occurs after a police shooting should stop wasting time and ask the single most important question “Why did you have rounds left in your magazine?”
