Kim Dotcom is back in court today, as the government appeals against the High Court overturning their search warrants. In the process, we've learned some rather unpleasant facts about the New Zealand Police: that they are cowboy gunbunnies who will go in with guns without any evidence to justify it:
Mr Davison led the special tactics group [STG] sergeant, whose name was suppressed, through a check-box threat assessment which led to the assault team being used in the raid.Using guns in a raid is dangerous, and a serious threat to human life. It requires a strong justification. In this case, there wasn't one; it basically seems to have been done because the police wanted to play with their toys and impress the FBI that they were taking alleged piracy "seriously". And that is just not good enough. The police should take their job seriously, not dick around like this, waste tens of thousands of dollars and unnecessarily endanger civilian lives on a fucking whim.The "yes" box was ticked next to questions about whether Dotcom was armed, had a history of violence, was showing current signs of violence and had issued threats to kill.
Mr Davison said the police documents also claimed officers faced the threat of injury or death if the specialist squad was not used.
But under questioning, the sergeant was unable to point to any information supporting the claim police officers were in danger during the raid.
