Emergency 111 Calls Response "Incompetent":

Two men charged with the shooting death of gang leader Tuamanako Tauhore on February 16th 2015 in the North-Eastern part of New Zealand - were decisively found Not Guilty on the grounds of self-defence. The trial started last week.

Defendant Roderick Bully Cooper claimed that he was defending the four adults and seven children in his home when he fired the "high powered rifle".

A High Court jury took less than four hours (including a lunch break) to reach their decision regarding the shooting death that occurred in rural Te Araroa - when Tauhore - who was a heavily tattooed patched gang member - arrived at the defendants home "in an agitated state" with other gang members.

The court heard recordings of the 111 calls as four different callers rang to request Police assistance and were faced with requests to provide further location details - when the operator seemed unable to locate the Te Araroa address - appearing to be confused and indecisive and was slow to pass on the emergency call to duty police.

 

It became clear that the centralised emergency call service is required to note a street name and house number and was unable to do so in this rural location - and that the nearest police duty officer when eventually notified of the conflict did not approach the scene but prudently established "a safe forward post" while waiting for the armed response team to arrive some hour and a half later.

The NZ Police Emergency 111 call service has been 'centralised' in recent years to increase efficiency (save money) and there are many instances now being quoted where the call operators appear to be unable to identify the emergency scene and fail to rapidly dispatch an appropriate response.

Emergency 111 Calls are initially taken by Privatised telecoms business Spark.

Many New Zealanders are concerned that tight funding of police resources is resulting in a much reduced law enforcement service here - and that our politicians and Government Ministers seem to be unwilling to address the issues as they themselves are unaffected  - having plentiful security staff and police special protection services available twenty-four hours a day.

I always thought that we pay taxes specifically so that our government provides essential public services. Privatised and Corporatized services are not cutting it.

- Unmanned Police Stations my ass!

Marty K.