By One News / TVNZ and is republished with permission
Police Minister Poto Williams has ruled out supporting the routine arming of police in New Zealand, despite a recent wave of incidents involving firearms.
Williams told Q+A there are “opportunities for us to do things in other ways” when it comes to keeping our officers safe.
“Police have access to weapons, they have access to training, but I do not [support general arming of police] as a principle,” she said.
Williams said there would be “a different dynamic if we arm our police generally”.
“I don’t think our community supports general arming of the police, I certainly don’t,” she said.
Q+A host Jack Tame asked the minister why there had been so much gun crime if the Government’s gun buyback had worked.
She defended the scheme, saying the Government had removed 60,000 military-style semiautomatic weapons out of the community.
Williams also said the Government needs “to continue with the arms register reform”.
“What we need to get a good handle on is how many weapons are in our community, and by registering those weapons, police will know when they go to an incident what they are facing.”
The ACT Party is promising to repeal laws introducing a firearm register.
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster told 1 NEWS on Friday officials were “looking at options” around the deployment of specialist groups, such as the armed offenders squad, in the wake of a “bad run” of gun violence.
“We need to improve the availability of specialist groups to respond in the course of a shift,” Coster said.
“Our armed offenders squad are only available on a call-out basis at the moment, so we are looking at options.”
Coster has ruled out a return of the controversial armed response teams, which were cut after public backlash.
