‘Doing our duty’ is something most of us consider when we take the trouble to vote or answer a jury duty summons. But for emergency service and defence personnel, doing their duty puts life and limb at risk, not by accident but deliberately and thoughtfully in service of our country.
In the last week there have been three separate violent attacks reported in the media – and if we look at annualised figures for assaults on police in any one year, another 50 or so took place that have not been reported. It also seems police are the butt of public esteem peaks and troughs dependant on the latest news bulletin or the last time we got a speeding ticket.
It’s not that long ago headlines screamed about ‘keystone cops’. There were derisive remarks about the way our most prominent civil protectors did their duty, because of errors in the 111 emergency call responses, the high numbers of infringement notices issued and the series of trials for a few members of the Rotorua CIB regarding events from about 20 years ago. What then changed people’s perception was some timely funding of communications centres, a refocus on priorities by an incoming government and also, tragically, a number of police killed whilst on duty.
Aside from the public face of policing, Association President Greg O’Connor very ably speaking on their behalf, most police just do the job and keep their mouths shut. Various privacy laws and conventions prevent them from telling their side of the story. The bawling offenders and their families are filmed swearing and slagging off in the first one or two items of news for a day or so, but the story is never revisited after the court cases are over. The aggravating features of the incident police were confronted with are never fully known by the public they serve - the alcohol and drug fuelled hate, the violence, the spit, the blood and the vomit. Nobody will ever know because much of it is never presented before the court due to legal irrelevance, police policy or just a lack of interest.
The public doesn’t want to know the real threats that exist in our own suburbs and cities – it will mean having to reconsider our personal safety, or it will be bad for business. It is easy to minimise then the contribution the police make, because whether or not we really are safe, we want to believe we are.
There has been a call for harsher penalties for serious violent offences against police and other emergency services staff, and I agree. When a crime is committed against an agent of the state, that violence against the agent is vicariously a crime against society. They are also doing a job that no one else is willing or skilled enough to do. If the community wants to instil a sense of ownership and responsibility towards the functionality of society, it needs to reinforce its abhorrence of those who ‘give the fingers’ to those rules. If the community doesn’t respect the rules enough to reinforce them in this way, how can we expect others to live by them?
