The Herald is critical of personal and public safety procedures employed by police prior to entering the shop where Navtej Singh lay wounded where he had been shot in a robbery of his Manurewa liquor store.
The comments in the editorial are similar to comments I heard from former ACT MP, Stephen Franks, on Radio NZ just before 5pm on Friday.
What they all have in common is the clear expectation that police can and should disregard their own personal safety in aid of a person like Navtej Singh.
The Herald says:
They know the series of explanations from the police - first they needed to arm their patrols before dispatching them, second they were following police safe assembly point protocols and third they had to be certain the armed villain was not a continuing threat at the scene - are flawed.
With respect, those procedures are not at all flawed. They have been composed after the funerals of other police, here in NZ and elsewhere, who did not follow such procedures.
The police absolutely did the right thing. They organised to meet an unknown armed threat. They ensured the reaction by armed officers was co-ordinated. We don't need police shooting each other. They ensured no one was going to be sniping at them or ambulance staff on the scene.
All prudent and necessary. Every public servant wants to go home to family in one piece at the end of their shift. No reasonable person should be expecting them to die on the job.
Having been a Corrections Officer, I would not discard procedures designed to ensure my own safety to satisfy some gung-ho desk-jockey at a daily newspaper. Management - and my family - would blame me for whatever happened if it went wrong and they would be right.
Police do a job most of don't want to do. They face people every day we cross the street to avoid. They do put their lives on the live every shift. But no one should ask - or expect - any police officer to walk into an environment where multiple armed assailants have already shot someone.
Easy for the editorialists, columnists and politicians to talk in comic-book terms about "firepower" and bravery. But which police family wants to hear Mummy or Daddy won't be home tonight because they were shot or taken hostage trying to rescue a wounded citizen?
It's like expecting soldiers to wade into a minefield to rescue a wounded comrade. You'd really like to just run their and pick him up and run out again. But unless you KNOW there are no more mines, more of you ending up in his situation won't be any help to him or your overall objective of providing police services to the community.
Next time there is a shooting, lets call up the editorial writers and columnists and let them have first whack at running into a shooting scene to show us all how brave they are.
No one should expect anyone to disregard their own safety in a situation like the one police faced last week.
Most insulting of all is the Herald using the word "bureaucracy" - the journalistic propaganda insult of choice - to deride the procedures intended to ensure their safety.
The Herald asks too much. No public servant outside the military should be expected to take unnecessary risks that could result in dying on the job.
This isn't a game of soldiers. Reading these commentators, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was.
