Auckland city brought to a standstill

[fivebob]

I remember the AOS closed in on a next door neighbour when i was a little kid. They had rubber bullets. He told me so

Doubt it, rubber bullets are used for riot control, not AOS situations. Can't remember my father ever mentioning rubber bullets and he was in the AOS, and was one of the few police officers in Tauranga that carried a firearm in the car when on patrol.

[pjay]

Edit: That was a dickhead post. I have my period

[Mr Revhead]

heylin, im actually surprised you think what you do after talking to the ppl you mention, as members i have spoken to differ from your opinion.

as for saying they should be up there with SAS etc, they are... they train with them at times...

[BlakJak]

AOS do?

Infrequently, id wager. STG, on the other hand, would train with SF more often.

Staggered degrees of response..

AOS -> STG -> CTTAG -> SAS

The latter two are military and would probably take a bit longer to spin up.
I don't know what the response time for STG would be.

The key point around AOS is that they're drawn from line cops, a selection of whom are on duty at any time and are able to respond without delay (lights, sirens) from basically the moment theyre paged or called for. Their special training will cover firearms skills of course - but it also covers (as pointed out in news coverage) the legal and safety aspects of the use of firearms, especially in situations such as this one.

If there was a mistake made i'm sure the investigation will reveal it - that is the point of the IPCA. This one is going to be under the spotlight, after all. Forensics are pretty powerful these days. My heart goes out to the cops who fired the M4's - the guilt must be horrendous. My money is on a ricochet first. (Failing that, someone made a tragic mistake.)

I for one am fairly grateful that police here don't have to use firearms as routinely as they do in other nations; and am similarly grateful that in a firearms event there are trained police available. I guess my big desire is that the training is maintained by all who need it, despite the fact that we're not dealing with cops who routinely carry sidearms; I read somewhere a while back that 50% of police have 'ready access' to a firearm when on duty, the big thing there has to be the maintenance of preparedness to use them when required...