Greater gun access for police weighed

Police Commissioner Howard Broad is looking at giving police greater access to firearms, after Tuesday's shooting of two officers and police dog Gage.

Christchurch constable Mitchel Alatalo was shot in the thigh, while Gage's handler Bruce Lamb's jaw was shattered.

Gage was shot, and died at the scene.

The group were fired on as they carried out a drugs search in the Christchurch suburb of Linwood.

Senior Constable Lamb had a firearm in a safe in his dog wagon, but had not taken it with him.

Mr Broad's plan would have firearms stored in a greater number of vehicles, rather than just in supervisors' cars.

The plan has been approved in principle by Police Minister Judith Collins, but she yesterday stopped short of full endorsement until she has seen details.

"I would need to see the policy in full, and police would be very keen to make sure any changes would have the general support of the public."

But police figures released to The New Zealand Herald under the Official Information Act show 641 of the approximate 2700 police vehicles that might be used to carry firearms already have gun safes in them.

They include pistol-only safes in dog handlers' vehicles, combined pistol and rifle safes in general duties cars, bulk rifle and pistol safes in sergeants' vehicles, and safes in rural officers' vehicles.

Police would not specify how many of the gun safes carried guns permanently - or how frequently - as it varied between districts.

Ms Collins yesterday said she was "comfortable" with locked boxes for frontline vehicles, and did not believe such a move would lead to an arms race with criminals.

Police Association president Greg O'Connor said locked boxes for each frontline vehicle was the "minimum" that should be done, and called for each sergeant and senior sergeant to be permanently armed.

He said it was inevitable that all police would be routinely armed and, "sadly, it will take more police shootings to get there".

Ms Collins said the work on police access to guns was not a knee-jerk reaction to Tuesday's shootings, and had been under way for months.

Human rights advocates and the Green Party have warned greater access to guns is a slippery slope towards a routinely armed police force, but Ms Collins said that was not being considered: "I have some real difficulties with that, and I would have to be convinced on the evidence that police and the public would be safer."

Human Rights Foundation executive director Peter Hosking said he had nothing against police having greater access to guns to protect themselves.

"But if there are more guns in police hands, then more guns appear in criminals' hands and they are more likely to be used.

It's not a safer situation; it's a riskier situation," he told Radio New Zealand National.

"More people die and that will be criminals, people with mental health problems; citizens will die, police will die."

- The New Zealand Herald