‘Armed Response Teams’ Won’t Stop Another Eli Epiha

Darroch Ball
Co-leader Sensible Sentencing Trust.

Armed Response Teams (ARTs) are a no-brainer. They provide a ready, well-trained, well-equipped, tactical team able to rapidly respond to dangerous firearms incidents in our communities. They also provide a very important presence in our community which allows our communities to physically see our constabulary’s answer to armed gangs.

Whether certain gang apologists like it or not, gang numbers and violence are both going through the roof and people are getting shot and killed. They might like to blame poverty, society, or colonisation but the reality is that we must now deal with an increasing level of danger in our communities the like of which we have never seen before.

We simply need a response to the danger – not only for the protection of the community, but for the protection of frontline officers.  ARTs will provide that certainty and capability for our police force to be able to do its job.

The National Party has said that they will bring back ARTs.  Which is great, but ARTs only take care of half of the problem.

The very nature of a ‘response team’ means that an incident would have to already have occurred before they can respond. The ‘response team’ wouldn’t have stopped Eli Epiha from shooting and killing Matthew Hunt.  Epiha was pulled over during a routine traffic stop and used an AK47 against Hunt who had nothing. The ‘response team’ wouldn’t have stopped the officer being shot in the shoulder during a routine traffic stop in Hamilton earlier this month – it was only luck that he wasn’t killed. That’s not what ARTs are designed for.

All and sundry can see these firearms incidents, during routine day-to-day duties, are continuing to increase in both number and brazenness with no signs of slowing down.

No one wants a society where our police need to be permanently armed. But we have to take our collective heads out of the utopian clouds and understand that reality is biting. If we don’t arm our frontline police we are going to end up sitting on our hands and watching as they continue to be shot at and killed.

They need to be armed to protect themselves, protect the community, and give them confidence to do their job.

The President of the Police Association Chris Cahill has stated that a majority of frontline officers are now increasingly feeling unsafe. Who wouldn’t when your job is now to guess if the car you just pulled over has a gang member sitting in the back with a semi-automatic on his lap – and you then have to approach the car with a taser and a notepad.  Wouldn’t you feel unsafe? Maybe that’s why seventy per cent of frontline constables now want to be permanently armed.

The number of ‘Armed Offenders Squad’ callouts and ‘Temporary Arming Orders’ are both at record highs. The reality is it’s likely now inevitable that frontline police will eventually be permanently armed – it’s just a matter of whether it’s before, or after, more officers are killed. Police Minister Poto Williams has stated categorically that Labour will never arm our police – no matter what the circumstances, no matter when, no matter how many cops are shot at. If that’s not the definition of operating under pure ‘blind ideology’ I’m not sure what would be. Our men and women in uniform deserve better than that

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