EDITORIAL: Self-defence is a right, not a wrong | Hawkes Bay News | Local News in Hawkes Bay

Louis Pierard

Police are attracting increasing criticism each time they investigate a citizen's armed response to a crime.

This week a Morrinsville farmer fired two shotgun blasts into the air to subdue two suspected petrol thieves, whom he forced to lie down until police arrived. Police are reported to be considering laying charges against the farmer.

The court of public opinion cannot be allowed to determine guilt or otherwise. Each case has to be examined objectively to determine whether a defender's response has been appropriate. While summary justice might appeal, vigilantism merely adds one kind of lawlessness to another.

Nevertheless, the public has good reason to suspect the worst when a victim is being investigated after taking action to defend his property.

Seared into recent memory are the two failed prosecutions of Northland farmer Paul McIntyre, who shot a thief on his property in October 2002.

Mr McIntyre was acquitted in the Kaikohe District Court, first on a charge of shooting and injuring a man with reckless disregard for the safety of others, then, of discharging a shotgun without reasonable cause in a manner likely to endanger the safety of others. The cost of defending the prosecutions brought him financial ruin in a case that provoked widespread sympathy, as well as deep indignation.

More recently was the unsuccessful prosecution of Auckland gun-shop owner Greg Carvell. Eleven months previously he shot a machete-wielding intruder who had demanded guns and threatened staff. Two JPs threw out the case that had caused a judge sentencing the intruder to wonder at the fact that Mr Carvell had defended himself only to be charged by police.

As we said at the time, Mr Carvell deserved the unqualified thanks of police and public; not to be dragged through the courts for his efforts.

Wise counsel says anyone faced with an intruder should lie low and call the police. For country folk, isolated and often far from help, reality dictates they must act themselves if criminals are to be defeated.

While police fear that a tolerance of armed responses could lead to escalation, with the likelihood that thieves will routinely arm themselves for potential shoot-outs, farmers and other vulnerable folk rightly insist that their security comes first. Many resent the fact that the advice to "do nothing" is imposed helplessness.

The first duty of the state is to protect its citizens, their families and their property from violence. If it cannot, then it should acknowledge the entitlement of every citizen to fight back.

When police respond to a citizen's armed defence by raising the prospect of charges, they offend a sense of natural justice and increase public suspicion that, again, it is the victim who gets the worse deal.

If a person defending his property is in such grave risk of prosecution for breaking the law, it implies a moral equivalence that considers him to be as bad as the thieves who come calling.

Rightly or wrongly, the public perceives such police inquiries as enthusiasm by the coercive arm of the state to punish citizens for its own failures. And when the court system takes over, it ignores the further injustices that are created by the testing of a legal principle. All of which does little to maintain respect for either the police or for the courts.

There has to be a fairer, more humane way of evaluating citizens' defence.

A good start would be to recognise the right of every citizen to defend himself, instead of appearing to condemn him for it.