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SSANZ

Self-defence - Why is Police Policy Protecting Criminals?

Dr Lech Beltowski

The recent claim by Northland Federated Farmers executive member Bill Guest that farmers in Northland's isolated areas need to keep loaded weapon for security has drawn the usual negative response from local police inspector Paul Carpenter. Unfortunately his comments demonstrate once again that -at least in Northland- police no longer have any clear understanding of where their responsibilities finish and those of law-abiding citizens begin.

Even if the irony of having an article entitled "Police; loaded guns for safety silly idea" just above an article "Raiders hit migrant workers" was insufficient to raise doubts about the official police position, simply rewording the reported comment by Inspector Paul Carpenter to "Police claim unloaded guns offer better safety" should surely remove all doubt.

If one wished to further test the hypocrisy of the current police position, one only has to ask what the likely police (and Police Association) response would be to any call for police to be disarmed, forced to carry unloaded guns only or made to keep their guns unloaded and all ammunition in a seperate locked box until a clearly defined emergency arises. Yet those are precisely the rules under which they expect everybody else to operate. Small wonder then, that it's the violent criminals who are winning.

As highly paid servants of the public, police do have an important role to play in maintaining law and order. However, there have always been practical limitations to what police can actually do for us. Such limitations have long been recognised in as much as police operate under a general collective obligation, a "duty of care" to society but without any strict legal obligation to guarantee the safety of individual citizens.

In effect, we have the absurd and totally improper situation of having the police -the very people who cannot be held legally accountable for failing to protect us- claiming the right to decide what we can and cannot do to protect ourselves and our families.

Northland Federated Farmers are certainly correct in their claim that drug- related violence and murder has become common in the area. They are also well within the law and within their rights in calling for farmers -especially those in isolated areas- to take whatever action is necessary to protect their families and property.

A local police force critical of such actions, seemingly happy to accept as inevitable the socially damaging actions of criminals but uncomfortable with the prudent responses of law-abiding taxpayers, must surely have reached rock bottom. When one then realises that farmers are only responding to a problem the police have been totally unable to deal with effectively for years, then it is abundantly clear that Northland police have no idea of their obligations or role. The throw-away comment by Inspector Carpenter that " there was a lot police could do to protect residents of remote areas" demands only one question- why haven't you been doing it?

Contrary to what police so often imply, self-defence is certainly legal. Section 48 of the NZ Crimes Act states that "Everyone is justified, in using, in the defence of himself or another, such force as, in the circumstances as he believes them to be, it is reasonable to use".

This is exactly the same law used by police to justify them having the right to carry and use firearms for their own protection yet there is nothing in the Act which gives police special rights over and above those of the citizen. Clearly EVERYONE, no matter what their job, no matter who they are, has the same right to self defence under New Zealand law as the police have. What is missing of course is the level playing field, the ability to use equal means. This, however, is purely due to how police policy currently interprets the law to disadvantage the law-abiding citizen. What seems to have been forgotten is that internal police policies do not have any real legal status, so the use of policy to justify restricting a legal right is almost certainly illegal. Possibly the Council for Civil Liberties might like to take this matter up.

Be that as it may, it is high time police throughout New Zealand were reminded that they do not yet have any special right to better self-defence than the people they are sworn to serve and that, no matter what their personal feelings on the matter, our common law right of self-defence is precisely that - a legally enforceable right.

Those who have advised police in their current policy on self-defence appear to have conveniently forgotten the basics of both common and constitutional law. The famous British Constitutional historian Sir William Blackstone, in his famous book " Commentaries on the laws of England" (first published in 1765) listed three primary rights -personal security, personal liberty and private property- which he regarded as natural rights. The specific right of individual self-defence he further regarded as a primary law of nature, a natural right that cannot be taken away from individuals by any of the laws of society. Clearly, Sir William had not reckoned with the present hierarchy of the New Zealand police nor with parliaments seemingly more interested in stripping away or restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens than in protecting them.

Since even the most junior police trainee understands that most crimes occur when police are not around, it hardly comes as a surprise to find that 99.9% of police work is reactive and begins well after the crime has been committed. Police are weekly unable to prevent hundreds of violent crimes and very rarely are they able to arrive in time to prevent a crime from being completed.

This fact must surely dash the hopes of those still naive enough to believe the often repeated claim that police can protect them, since it is somewhat unrealistic to expect help from someone who is not yet physically there. One problem may be that police now believe their own propaganda.

However, surely the most fundamental problem with the current police policy on self-defence is simply that it is the victim who always arrives at the crime scene first, well before the police. Yet, if the current police policy on self defence is any indication, police must believe that disarming victims and thereby making them more vulnerable to violent crime equates with crime control. It is high time senior police officers were made to explain how giving extra legal powers, pepper sprays, personal radios and self-defence firearms only to the people who always arrive last at the crime scene can save innocent lives or be a sensible and effective crime fighting strategy.

It was Sir Robert Peel, the founding father of modern policing who, over a century ago clearly defined the separate if overlapping roles of both the police and the law-abiding citizen when he said "the police are the people and the people are the police."

He understood, even if his modern-day successors choose not to, that police by themselves cannot hope to deal effectively with crime and that the most effective way to minimise opportunity for criminals and thereby reduce crime is to ensure both the citizen and the police officer work together as equals, each having an equal right to react to criminal activity as soon as they see it occurring.

Sadly, in New Zealand two decades of a dangerously illogical and probably illegal police policy on self defence has ensured this is no longer the case. After suffering years of rising violent crime in silence, farmers in Northland have finally said "enough is enough". For all our sakes we should support them.