Hmmm …….Having spent a portion of my working life in the NZ Police I’m not all impressed with the way the PAP handled the situation at all. In NZ we are told only to shoot if we felt that lives were in imminent danger and if we did what the PAP did, we would have received unrelenting criticism by the public.
The situation would have been assessed and it was pretty clear that the man held an axe in one hand and perhaps a knife of some sort in the other, which he threw down after the warning shot was fired. He was no longer a threat after being hit with the opening shots as he threw the axe so there was no need for the continued shooting as he was collapsing and on the ground.
Secondly was there any need to have opened fire as the thrown axe was not in a life threatening trajectory and missing the police.
It is a reasonable assessment that the axe was intended and was going to hit someone when it was obvious the man will throw it at the PAP but before it was actually in the air. In the US this situation definitely would have warranted deadly force at that point. I do agree there should not have been shooting after the man had fallen to the ground.
I do have several other observations and questions:
- I assume neither the police nor the PAP had tasers? It would have been good from an intelligence perspective to be able to interrogate the man if he was arrested alive. I am guessing it is another cost issue.
- If just two of either the regular police or the PAP had riot gear, long baton and shield, and the appropriate training they could also have subdued the man alive with little risk to themselves.
- Why were the PAP so close to the man? Assuming they have average marksmanship they should be able to guarantee a hit from multiple times the distance they were at where he could not threaten them. The regular police probably can't hit the man though unless they were at the distance the PAP were at.
- What was the larger context of what is seen in the video? Was this the end of a long pursuit or an initial response? Were the five officers the only authorities assigned to the scene? Could they have called and waited for appropriately equipped backup to capture rather than kill the man without undue risk to anyone else? What is the organizational response of the authorities to such a situation? Was this man a lone wolf or could he be part of a bigger group of hostiles? Was this during a normal time or a curfew?
