Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to take a call on this bill or not, because whenever I speak about my police dogs, I tend to get emotional. But I felt that it was appropriate to support my colleague Matthew Doocey and thank him for bringing this bill to the House. Reflecting back and responding to what was a very strong feeling and message being sent to him by his own community in relation to police dogs and them being killed on duty, I thought the best way for me to do this was just to share some personal insights and tell a story to the House about exactly what police dogs are all about. I wanted to respond, in particular, to the comments made by the Green Party member Ricardo Menéndez March, calling them attack dogs.

So, firstly, let me talk about my own dog, Czar, and the section that I was a part of. Czar and I, in probably the first couple of weeks we were operational, were called out to a job where a young guy—it’s a sad story; he was suffering from mental health—had armed himself with a samurai sword, put a bulletproof vest on, and went up to Rotorua Hospital with the intent of killing some of the nursing staff up there. I was called out. Fortunately, they managed to lock the doors and he couldn’t get in, and when I arrived he was making his way down to a primary school in Rotorua. During the arrest, both Czar and I were stabbed with the samurai sword. I wasn’t sure whether Czar would make it, but he did. He returned to duty, and he worked out a fully operational police life.

I’ll come back to Czar, but I want to talk about Rajah. Rajah was Kevin Weatherly’s dog. In Gisborne, Kevin and I were the Armed Offender Squad (AOS) dog handlers there for many years, and so Kevin and I worked very closely together and our two dogs Czar and Rajah worked closely together. Kevin was called out to a violent domestic one night, where the offender had taken a baseball bat and he’d assaulted his partner so badly that she was crippled on the floor and couldn’t move. When Kevin arrived, the offender moved to the kitchen and took out a butcher’s knife with the intent of finishing what he’d started. Kevin and Rajah intervened immediately, got into the house, and Rajah was stabbed in the neck and the chest during the arrest. Rajah never really made a full recovery, in my view, in terms of returning to work.

Then I want to talk about Woolf, Bill Eivers’ dog in Gisborne. During an arrest, Woolf was stabbed through the eye and lost his eye. Although he returned to police duties, he was never the same as well.

I spoke with Mike Sandle today. Mike is actually the manager of the Black Caps and has been for 10 years, and has been a part of what’s been a very successful leadership team with them. But he was a police dog handler with me, and he reminded me of his dog Rock. Mike lost contact with Rock one night, with a very violent offender that had managed to escape an AOS cordon, and Mike lost contact with Rock. Rock actually found the offender. They tumbled into a river and the offender drowned him—held him under and drowned him. This story actually has a happy ending, because somehow—they’re not sure what happened—Rock, who was obviously being held under, had let go of the offender. He was washed down the river, and somehow got a gasp of air. When Mike found him, they were able to revive him, and he actually went back to duty.

I just want to tell one other very quick story. Czar and I were called out one night to go to the Taupō emergency centre. Pete Masters was there, a very well-known New Zealand rescue helicopter pilot. It was a terrible night, there was a storm—snow, sleet, gale-force winds. He said, “There’s a two-year-old girl that’s gone missing down at Ruapehu, at the national park. It’s marginal flying. I’ll go if you’ll go.”, and I said, “We have to go—it’s a two-year-old. We’ve got to get down there as quickly as we can”.

Czar lay on the floor, basically, on our flight down—I don’t want to recount that flight again. We arrived there, Czar worked tirelessly through the night in sleet and in rain, sucking freezing cold air up over his olfactory glands. His feet were torn up with volcanic rock and snow. Thankfully, a guide—Cliff Jones—and Pete Masters went back up in the helicopter and went ahead of where I was tracking. We found that two-year-old. I’ll never forget the look in Cliff’s eye when he came out holding her, and, you know what? Czar wanted to get to her. Czar’s tail was waggling, and—for Mr Ricardo—he didn’t want to bite her. He wanted to nuzzle her. He wanted to give her a lick because he’d been working for three or four hours to try and find her in very difficult conditions. A week later, he was down in Tūrangi confronting an offender with an axe who was on methamphetamine.

This bill is about what value do we do put on our police dogs. What value do we put on them? I say that the five years in Matt Doocey’s bill is a fair value to put on the life of our police dogs.

The member’s time has expired.

God make me the person my dog believes me to be.

My dog is currently wearing the cone of shame. He would not make a police dog. He is a very, very nervous labradoodle. But, I’ll tell you what, there is nothing like the love of a dog, like the devotion of a dog, and like the selflessness and the loyalty of a dog.

Mark Mitchell, thank you for those stories of the remarkable spirit that we are so incredibly lucky to have when we partner with a dog. There is absolutely nothing like it. I learnt to walk holding on to an Old English sheepdog called Arthur. One of my children actually wants to a policeman so that he can be a police dog handler.

With all of that, however, it is our job as parliamentarians and as lawmakers not to act on sentiment but to make a difference for our society and make a real difference for our society. I rose earlier and I said that in the short time I have had the privilege to stand in this House, I have been somewhat disheartened by the bills that have been proposed that seem to me sheer emotion and not a lot of practicality. You may well want to reflect on the fact that a party that prides itself on its hard-headed pragmatism is the party that is putting forward measure after measure, with not a lot of actual effect behind it.

When there are good bills that come across the House, they are looked at seriously, and they are accepted by this side of the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

I have just—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

I’m sorry, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): If the member could make a passing reference to the bill.

Oh, a passing reference, ma’am. No, my point is that this bill is one of a number that we have looked at which don’t have a real, practical impact.

The problem with this is: 40,000 call outs, 56 years of police dog service, and, as tragic as each of these incidents is, 26 deaths only in 56 years, and some of those were actually accidents. I ask the House whether there is really a need, other than sheer emotion, to bring this forward.

The Sentencing Act already makes aggravating features possible to take into account the death or the injury of a police dog. We have, under section 9(1)(a), actual or threatened violence or the use of a weapon; under section 9(1)(d), the extent of the loss and the damage and the harm—I don’t think anyone would not expect a judge to pay attention to the loss of a police dog—particular cruelty, under section 9(1)(e) or the victims’ vulnerability, under section 9(1)(g); and, finally, in section 9(4), any other aggravating factor the court sees fit. We have the mechanics already to take the loss of a police dog into account.

If the death results from ill-treatment, we can then turn to the Animal Welfare Act, which was—I would like to point out—amended by the National Government in 2010, as far as the penalties went: in section 28, five years’ imprisonment or a fine not exceeding $100,000 max., or both, for anyone who wilfully ill-treats an animal with the result that it dies or is permanently disabled or seriously injured and impaired. The National Government had the opportunity in 2010. They changed it to section 28, and I suggest that we stick with what is actually working and sensible.

I’d also just like to go back to the point I was making earlier. If this is a deterrent sentence, again, it ain’t gonna work, and I don’t see the point in doing things that ain’t gonna work for the sheer candy and the sugar hit of making ourselves feel good. I’m here to make a difference.

In 1941, we removed the death penalty for murder. In 1949, the National Government brought it back. In 1957, we removed it again. Do you know why? Because the rate of murder doesn’t change. Crimes of passion—and killing a police dog, that’s one of them—

The member’s time has expired.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s great to be able to speak on, I guess, another issue involving first responders, and in this case it’s the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill. I want to just acknowledge the New Zealand Police, and particularly the dog section.

I know members of that section and the work that they do, and can I acknowledge Mark Mitchell and Matt Doocey for not only their work in it, but in the previous speech I talked about that not being genuine. I believe there is a genuine desire here from both members to do this, because I know that, and, look, I have seen a police dog in action on a rare occasion and I did wonder what the heck was going on. You could hear sirens. I was down at Shorland Park there on the south coast of Wellington and I just heard a flurry of Holden Commodore dog vans, and out pop dogs and off they run. Police were everywhere and I didn’t really know what was going on, but what I do know and what I did see is that the police dog handlers rewarded their dogs for capturing the offender, or whoever was doing a deed that was wrong, and they did that with love. I thought, “Now, there we go—there goes a part of the police service I certainly wouldn’t want anything to do with.”, but I do acknowledge the importance of our police dog section in the New Zealand Police.

I said also in the last call that I spoke on regarding first responders that there had been calls on our opposition to that being part of the soft on crime mantra of this Government. Can I reinforce to you that this is not true, and that—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: It is true.

It’s not true, and can I just correct the member who’s being a little unruly on that side of the House that the mantra of this police service under this Government is prevention first, and they will know that. They will know that anything that happens comes with a prevention-first value approach, and they know that if things worked previously, then they wouldn’t need to do things like this.

But, in that essence, we are opposing this bill, and that’s no disrespect to those members. It’s really saying, “Hold on a minute.”, in terms of increasing the maximum sentence for the killing of a police dog from two to five years’ imprisonment. That underpins that decision. It underpins it because it’s saying that, actually, I know—and I said this in my last speech—that the policemen and women of Aotearoa New Zealand go to work not thinking that there will ever be a case where they go there thinking, “Hopefully, there’ll be a sentence of five years versus two.” That’s not what they think. They’re there to do a job and to do a job well. That includes just catching the offender or contributing to the process of catching an offender, and the dog is the mechanism in that sense. So there’s no disrespect there. The issue here is just purely, I believe, around the deterrent being the extension of the time frame from two years to five years. That’s, for me, the heart of the opposition to such a bill—saying “Does that underpin the need for this amendment bill to go forward?”

We’ve heard already some of the reasons why in terms of the killing of police dogs—very few—and look, it could all change in a flash. Something might be happening right there, right now somewhere around Aotearoa New Zealand.

Can I say this: that on balance in terms of how this bill’s been put together, what the bottom line for this, and whether it will make a major difference, I don’t believe it will. I know that the police dog section of New Zealand Police would want any protection they can get, but this probably isn’t one of them. I don’t know that, because I haven’t sat down and talked, certainly, with our district police service, but I do know this: that more equipment, or more resources of any sort, would certainly override this amendment bill. Kia ora.

Five minutes in reply—Matt Doocey.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Tonight, we are debating the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill. There are really only two positions in this debate. The first is that you believe the current penalty of two years for killing a police dog in the line of duty is sufficient, which is the status quo—and that is the Government’s position—whereas on this side of the House, we wholeheartedly believe the penalty for killing a police dog should be increased to five years.

This issue was raised with me by my constituents in Waimakariri after the death of the police dog Gazza in 2016. I listened to my constituents and I brought this bill up to Parliament because I am representing their views. Gazza was the seventh dog to be killed in New Zealand since 1972. Twenty-four police dogs have given up their lives in the line of duty to keep us safe, to keep our families safe, and to keep our communities safe, and why I am proud to be standing here supporting this bill tonight is that I have the support of thousands of Kiwis who have backed this bill and signed my petition.

Currently, the penalty for killing a police dog in New Zealand is too lenient. When you look at other countries around the world, in the United States, it’s up to 10 years; in Canada, up to five years; and in South Australia, up to five years. We are too lenient with our penalty for killing a police dog.

The New Zealand Police Association supports this bill. They said they support the section 53 which is my bill in its entirety. They said, “a police dog is a key part of a police team, and, within police, any act of violence towards the police dogs is considered similar to an attack on a police officer. It is a direct attack on law and order and needs to be recognised for the serious offence it is.” The Police Association support this bill.

The Ministry of Justice wrote, and has advised that the proposed legislation remedies a discrepancy in New Zealand law, because what we have in New Zealand law is that this bill will propose increasing the penalties to bring it in line with the maximum term of the Animal Welfare Act 1999. We have a discrepancy in our current law. In the Animal Welfare Act, if you were to kill a dog, you would get up to five years. In the Policing Act, it’s capped at two years. So the Ministry of Justice is advising Parliament that this bill will remedy a discrepancy in our current laws.

To finish, I want to finish with the words of Josh Robertson. Not everyone will know who Josh Robertson is. He reached out to me when he heard of this bill on social media. Josh is the police dog handler of the late Gazza, the police dog that died in the line of duty that I wrote this bill about. He writes, “I am humbled that the public would choose to support increasing penalties for injuring or killing our police dogs. These dogs help victims, apprehend dangerous offenders, and protect fellow police staff. I received overwhelming support from a wide range of the community when my police dog Gazza was shot and killed in 2016. The offender shot at me through a closed door, and Gazza was shot and killed as a result. It left me devastated, as well as a lot of the public who support hard police dogs’ work. Gazza worked on the front line for only 2½ years and apprehended over 250 offenders—250 offenders that probably would not have been caught if he wasn’t there. These dogs are invaluable to police and to the public. There is no excuse to kill or injure a police dog.” That’s the words of the police dog handler of the late Gazza.

We’ve heard the words of the Ministry of Justice, we’ve heard the words of the Police Association, we’ve heard the words of New Zealanders, and what did we have tonight from the Government MPs? Absolutely disgraceful. Shame on them tonight.