The Police Commissioner says there will not be a move towards general arming of officers, after the verdict in the trial of a police killer.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The man who murdered police officer Matthew Hunt was on Tuesday found guilty of the attempted murder of the officer's partner Constable David Goldfinch.
Eli Epiha fled a routine traffic stop in Massey in June last year, crashed into a parked car and a bystander, then fired 14 bullets from a semi-automatic rifle.
Four bullets hit and killed Matthew Hunt, and four hit and wounded his colleague.
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said safety of the front line was top of mind for the police leadership.
Much of the recent violence was gang-related, there was an increased willingness to use firearms and new groups, many set up by 501 deportees from Australia, had disrupted the gang scene, he said.
Coster said police were looking at "whole system settings" to make police as safe as possible.
"It's tempting to want to reach for a single solution that would be the magic wand.
"I'm pretty clear that general arming is not that magic wand.
"If we look internationally, there's no jurisdiction you would point to to go they're so much safer than us because they carry firearms."
New Zealand had a unique policing style which has good relationships with the community, he said.
"That adds to our safety overall. Whilst you can point to individual instances where having a firearm might make a difference, actually in the round we are safe because of the way we police.
"What's unique about what we're seeing is the level of violence and the escalation and willingness of certain groups to use firearms, generally on each other in the gang context, and occasionally turning those towards police."
"We're very focused on getting firearms out of the hands of those people and focusing on those groups that are doing it."
Gangs were the majority part of firearm violence but significant incidents such as alleged carjackings in Auckland recently were not gang related.
"It's not only gangs, it ties back to mental health problems, drug problems, and then mixing the access to firearms in all of that."
It would take time to get rid of illegal firearms under the tougher gun legislation, he said.
"The reality is we have had a lax environment for a long time and it's going to take some time to tighten up, remove firearms that are in the illegitimate fleet."
"The tools are there now. You can no longer go and buy the type of firearm that was used to kill Matthew Hunt."
Coster said police were focused on gangs than ever, reflected in the the number of asset seizures, prosecutions and firearms seizures.
"There has been a very unfortunate escalation in the violence which has been caused by new groups being established, many of those seeded by 501s who have brought a new level of sophistication, violence and international networks, and that has disrupted what was otherwise a reasonably settled landscape."
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