Police are alarmed at the number of “very visible” gun crimes after a spate of incidents involving firearms over the weekend, including one that left a man dead.
There were five reported serious incidents involving firearms in public spaces over the weekend – in Wairarapa, Wellington, Gisborne, Palmerston North and Warkworth, north of Auckland.
The first took place in Gisborne on Saturday morning when shots were fired at a house, followed a few hours later in Wairarapa when a man died in a drive-by shooting.
On Sunday, a vehicle was stolen at gunpoint in Wellington’s Strathmore, and then in Palmerston North a man pointed a gun at members of the public.
Further north on Sunday, State Highway 1 near Warkworth was closed in both directions after “reports of a person or people letting off firearms”.
Police association president Chris Cahill told Breakfast those were just the recorded incidents involving guns, and he was aware of at least four more incidents over the weekend.
“Most days I get a report of some form of firearms violence. Whether it’s someone doing an armed robbery, whether it’s a shooting of someone’s house, often the wrong house, which is really concerning… obviously the weekend was particularly bad,” he said.
He said this was the new normal for front-line officers.
“If they stop a gang vehicle now, they’ll take it that there’s probably a firearm in it. And unfortunately, they’re right more often than not.
“The number of firearms in the community continues to be a concern, even though police have done such good work and that just tells us how bad the problem was when we really started concentrating on it.”
NZ Police Deputy Commissioner Tania Kura told Breakfast the spike “seems quite horrific this weekend because it’s very, very visible”.
“This weekend was quite concerning just with the amount of events that happened in those public places. I mean, shopping at your supermarket… that’s just not what’s expected in our community. Rightly, you know, we are concerned about that,” she said.
She said incidents were increasing “year on year”.
“If you think about over the years, you definitely see more firearms being used.”
She said investment in tactical response models meant staff were better trained and the capability to handle firearms during incidents were higher.
PM responds
The prime minister said the gang patch legislation should work to bring down firearm offences. (Source: Breakfast)
Speaking on Breakfast, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the Government had “done some really great things to give police more tools” to fight gun violence.
“We’ve got some good indications that crime is coming down, we’ve got less issues around retail crime, we’ve got gang members being put under real pressure by the police [and] the police feeling good about having the backup from the government with the tools,” Luxon said.
He pointed to the new gang legislation as one of the tools implemented to help bring down gun violence in New Zealand.
“When you’re talking about illegal guns, and instances like we’ve seen over the weekend, and the concerning rise of guns over the last 20 years or so, what we have to do is crack down on gangs.”
“The police now have new powers to crack down on the gang patches. The upside of that is it actually gives police the powers to go into gang pads, gang cars when they pull people over and they’ve actually been securing a lot of these illegal guns off gang members over the period of the last quarter,” Luxon said.
He said the issue was “the illegal guns sit with the gangs”.
“So that’s why we got to smash the gangs and actually put them in their place, and actually take the guns off them and gang members.”
“We’ve got our gang disruption units that have been formed regionally and also nationally, and they’re doing a very good job of coordinating, keeping the pressure on the gangs. So there’s been an awful lot that we’ve done in the first 14 months of this government to make sure that we actually are restoring law and order,” Luxon said.
