Thread: Kawerau siege - Stuff court report

Originally Posted by Koshogi

Hopefully it doesn’t include firing indiscriminately through walls into rooms suspected of containing hostages/innocent woman or children.

Absolutely not. And this is why it is a training issue (and a legal one). The poor officers going into a nasty, and frankly, specialised, role of urban house clearance in an ambiguous environment and then reacting as best their natural instinct tells them to in the heat of the circumstances - like seeing your mate dropped like a log. Only those involved will ever know what went through their minds in the stress of the moment, but this is where training makes the difference in training the agreed actions (ie policy / tactics / procedures) into the mind (stress reaction / resilience) and the body (muscle memory). No one can sell the narrative to me that it is "SOP" to clear an urban room by fire, without knowing the risk of innocents being present. Not that NZ Police disclose or discuss tactics or operational procedures...

So, in a nutshell, a reaction in the heat of the moment that a better resourced and therefore better trained police force could have handled better. Particularly important when you are looked to as an example organisation. Instead, a guy trying to do his job the best he can is exposed to massive risk of manslaughter / negligence and a bunch of other strong words like those from being under prepared in a situation he wasn't trained adequately for.