John MacDonald: The Eagle Has Landed In Chch And Should Stay Canterbury Mornings With John MacDonald podcast

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Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald »
John MacDonald: The Eagle has landed in Chch and should stay

2d ago 4:18

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The eagle has landed. One of the police Eagle helicopters from Auckland is in Christchurch for the next two months as part of a crackdown on these criminal kids doing-over dairies and committing other crimes.

I think it’s brilliant that it’s here and I think we need one here permanently.

For several reasons: Christchurch is New Zealand’s second-largest city; we have a level of criminal activity here to justify it; and it’s not as if a police helicopter hasn’t been put to good use here before.

In 2020, it was in Christchurch for a five-week trial, and it was also used a few times earlier than that after the mosque attacks and when Prince William visited.

During the trial in 2020, the helicopter was sent to 346 incidents ranging from a water rescue, a robbery attempt, and helping a man thought to be having a heart attack in a park.

There was a bit of chat at the time about people being woken up at night by the sounds of it flying around. But an informal survey of residents found that only 24% of people thought the sound or noise from the helicopter was annoying. 60% said it didn’t bother them and 16% said they hadn’t noticed it.

The police themselves gave it a very positive review. One officer wrote to the Police News magazine saying every officer who had worked with the helicopter had found it beneficial in helping to prevent crime, catch offenders, and increase safety.

But despite Canterbury police themselves giving positive feedback on the trial, the powers-that-be decided it wouldn’t be made permanent. Which some people would have been happy about, because there were some who hated the helicopter being here and weren’t excited about the idea of us getting on here permanently.

National MP Gerry Brownlee was dead against it. I remember him saying that plenty of people had told him that they hated the noise. They also found it traumatising hearing it, because it took them back to the days after the earthquakes.

I get that. Nevertheless, I’ve always been in no doubt that we would benefit from having a permanent helicopter here. Which National kind-of talked about prior to the last election.

The party’s Christchurch central candidate was at a street corner meeting, and someone asked him what National was going to do about youth crime and whether it had plans for a police helicopter in Christchurch.

According to someone who was there, he said that Christopher Luxon had given it the nod but there wouldn’t be any announcement before the election.

That was it. Nothing more since.

But we know the cops love it. Most residents seem to like it. And my pick would be that support for us having a dedicated police helicopter would be much higher now than when the trial happened in 2020.

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