ARTs and the myth of the unarmed police officer

Following a controversial six-month trial, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster announced on 09 June that Armed Response Teams (ARTs) would not be part of the future New Zealand policing model.

According to the Commissioner, the decision took into account preliminary findings from the trial evaluation, feedback received from the public, and consultation with community forum groups.

“It is clear to me that these response teams do not align with the style of policing that New Zealanders expect,” stated the Commissioner.

“For Police, the trial was about having specialist police personnel immediately ready to deploy to critical or high risk incidents, to support our frontline staff where they needed enhanced tactical capabilities.

“Having listened to feedback from our people through the trial, we are also undertaking a programme of work looking at our broad tactical capability to ensure our critical response options remain fit for purpose,” he said.

“We will still complete the evaluation into ARTs and that will now inform the wider tactical capability work programme. Any options that come out of that will be consulted with our communities to ensure we take a collaborative approach to policing in our communities.”

According to New Zealand Police Association President Chris Cahill, the ART “initiative was hobbled from the start because of a lack of consultation on the concept of ARTs, and no clear communication on the aim of the trials.”

“If you don’t build solid foundations on issues as potentially volatile as armed police, you can’t possibly hope to take the community with you, and that is exactly what has happened in this case,” wrote Mr Cahill.

In his remarks, the NZPA president pointed to mis-steps, including ART vehicles “that looked pretty sinister in comparison to the police vehicles we are familiar with, despite the fact that those everyday police patrol cars have Glock pistols and Bushmaster rifles in them for officers to use when needed.”

According to Mr Cahill, NZPA members were supportive of the ART concept based on safety factors where “highly qualified and experienced officers were able to deploy quickly and efficiently to critical incidents, as well as support frontline officers.”

“What hasn’t changed with Commissioner Coster’s decision is that the communities the ARTs were deployed to are still at risk, and we want to know as soon as possible Police plans for addressing this.”

Former Police Commissioner Mike Bush announced the ART trial on 18 October last year as an initiative aimed at supporting Police’s tactical capabilities on the frontline.

ARTs were part of the Police Armed Offenders Squad (AOS) that for the trial were routinely armed, equipped, mobile and ready to support in relation to incidents requiring “enhanced tactical capabilities.”

Counties Manukau, Waikato and Canterbury were the three Police districts chosen for the trial due to having the highest number of firearms seized, located and surrendered, and possessing the largest AOS groups to support the trial.

ARTs were to be focused on responding to events where a significant risk is posed to the public or staff, and on supporting the execution of pre-planned and high-risk search warrants, high-profile public events and prevention activities. However, according to data obtained by Newshub, the ARTs mostly responded to traffic stops.

Apart from major criticisms over lack of consultation with government and Iwi, concerns that the ARTs constituted an unnecessary militarisation of New Zealand policing were further inflamed by local and international public responses to the death in the US of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

On 12 June, New Zealand Herald reported that Defence Minister Ron Mark had called for an independent review into “why frontline officers were armed with military grade-assault rifles in the first place.”

Given that the Government had confiscated all semi-automatic weapons in the buyback scheme following the Christchurch Mosque Attacks, it was the opinion of the Defence Minister that police were inappropriately armed against members of the public.

“We have always held concerns with the creeping militarisation of the police force given the Government already has multiple layers of armed response, across agencies,” he said.

Despite the apparent lack of consultation preceding the ART trial, the idea of armed response units has been discussed in New Zealand law enforcement circles for some time.

In the June 2009 edition of online Police publication Ten One, the then Commissioner Howard Broad made reference to Armed Response Vehicles (ARVs) in the UK as a model that might work well in New Zealand.

ARVs, he explained, are small teams of specially trained officers “permanently on standby to respond to a serious threat”

“They are not armed officers most of the time, and are able to carry out routine frontline duties, but they have immediate access to firearms from a small, secure armoury in their vehicles and are better trained than our current general staff to handle armed threats,” he wrote.

“Some version of this could be useful in areas with a population base and number of incidents to justify it, such as Auckland. It is one option to consider for the future.”

In the same article, Mr Broad comments that being unarmed “is a unique and cherished feature of the policing style adopted by New Zealand Police – a style for which we are held in high regard internationally.”

In his announcement in relation to the discontinuation of ARTs, Commissioner Coster also refers to the Police’s unarmed tradition, stating that he is “committed to New Zealand Police remaining a generally unarmed Police service.”

But, according to former NZ Police officer Dr Richard Shortt in a Stuff.co.nz article published on 11 th June, Commissioner Coster’s comment of preserving the ‘routinely unarmed’ tradition of the New Zealand Police “is two decades and three police commissioners out of date.”

It was in the early 2000s, writes Dr Shortt, that NZ Police transitioned from its routinely unarmed status to being routinely armed, “with the only real difference being in the style of that arming.

“Instead of being always on the hip, the guns were now always in the car and immediately available to officers,” he wrote. “This change was probably one of the most momentous in modern NZP history and seemingly passed almost without comment.”

He describes NZ Police of today as “a well-armed police service,” with patrol officers having semi-automatic pistols and rifles immediately to hand, and equipped with tasers, pepper spray and extendable metal batons on their person.

It’s a perspective that’s in part shared by an NZ Police officer writing anonymously for Stuff.co.nz on 4 March 2019, who puts it in slightly more stark terms.

“General arming is halfway here already and people didn’t notice,” wrote the un-named officer. “Health and safety demands we must protect our staff and the cold fact is we have been an armed police for quite some time. It’s no coincidence we are not being murdered like we were and armed criminals are being shot more often.”

Left-wing groups also point to what might be described as the quiet militarisation of policing in New Zealand. The ART decision, according to the Socialist Equality Group, “represents a temporary retreat by the police, which has long been seeking to equip all frontline officers with guns.”

According to Dr Shortt, the time has come for the myth of being routinely unarmed “to be put to bed, and for the NZP and society to accept they have a well-armed, and routinely armed, police service that works every day and night to deliver safer communities together. The difference is in the style, not the substance.”