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Para-Military Police are to patrol the streets of New Zealand communities. Armed Offenders Squad (AOS) will be patrolling in “Special Police” vehicles in a trial to make them able to respond to “Armed Incidents” more promptly.
Special police vehicles carrying trained armed officers will routinely patrol Auckland, Waikato and Canterbury in a police trial that hopes to cut down response times to serious incidents involving firearms.
[…] Police have had growing concerns about the increasing number of incidents that police respond to that involve firearms, and that is understood to have contributed to the decision to trial armed response vehicles.
A source confirmed to the Herald that the trial will be in Counties Manukau, Waikato and Canterbury.
NZ Herald
It was the Police themselves several years ago that changed the way that the AOS could respond, by centralising where their “Weaponry” was held. So now they are saying New Zealand has comparable gun crime to the likes of Chicago, Baltimore, Sao Paulo etc. This is nothing more than an extension of the latest anti-firearms stance from Police and is an attempt to justify their massive power grab in the legislation/law making department under the new Arms Amendments.
What is the underlying reasoning behind this? To keep us safe they say, but I say fooey to that. They have been up arming the AOS for years and are itching to justify the expense. Are you telling me this lot will be driving around waiting for an Armed Incident? What happens when there are none? How will they justify it? They will start deploying them for everything that comes across their bows. Be very afraid New Zealand, and watch this escalate as they go looking for incidents to respond to. This is a truly alarming state of affairs.