John MacDonald: I was wrong and the police were right

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

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I was wrong and the police were right.

After yesterday’s events, I’ll admit that I was wrong when I said over the last few years that the police were pussy-footing around with Tom Phillips.

That instead of waiting for him to come out of hiding with his three kids, they should've been more gung-ho on it and gone after him.

Yesterday changed all that and proved to me that the police did do the right thing. Even though it dragged out for years, they did the right thing waiting.

If they hadn’t, there could very well have been more than one person dead at the end of it.

Something my thinking hasn’t changed on though, is the shameful way people have obviously been helping Phillips to stay in hiding for nearly four years.

The police have pretty much said that this has been happening, and, if you talk to anyone familiar with the community there, they’ll tell you the same thing.

And that person or those people —however many there are— should be ashamed of themselves.

What has amazed me while this whole thing has been dragging on is the number of people prepared to defend Tom Phillips. In some people’s eyes, he’s been a father who just wanted to do the best for his kids.

A father driven to the brink by the system.

I’m not blind to the complexities of situations like this and I know there will be a lot to it that we don’t know about – a lot we don’t need to know about.

But how anyone could think it was a good idea to support this guy, I’ll never know.

Because without their “help”, those kids could have been back safe long before now.

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