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by jashmatthews 3005 days ago 

   A police raid is no laughing matter. People die all the time, so it's fortunate nobody got hurt.
Not in New Zealand, they don't. Although Hollywood did put pressure on the NZ government to do a full tactical raid on this guys house.
3 comments
shawabawa3 3005 days ago
They broke into the guys house with loaded automatic weapons.

That's putting everyone involved in lethal danger, no matter what country it's in

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djsumdog 3005 days ago
And Many people who used Megaupload for legit data storage lost all of it after the US raids. Customer data still hasn't been recovered.
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djsumdog 3005 days ago
NZ cops do carry guns, just typically not on their person. They're locked in the boot of their vehicles. I have seen an NZ officer with their firearm on them and it's weird enough that everyone takes notice; like seeing litter in a mall in Singapore.
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jhayward 3005 days ago
How many full tactical anti-terror assaults, including 9 operators deploying from helicopters in assault landings, has NZ done? Besides the raid on Dotcom, that is.
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jashmatthews 3005 days ago
About 1000 per year, and on average they have to kill less than one person per year, despite 1 million guns for 4 million people.

They make heavy use of helicopters as there’s only one squad covering the entire South Island, and only two covering the North Island.

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jhayward 3003 days ago
Seriously? They're doing 3 anti-terror assaults every day of the year? Can you point me to some statistics? I had no idea NZ had such a terrorism problem.
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jashmatthews 3002 days ago
More like SWAT than anti-terror, but yes, our police execute 3+ tactical responses per day.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

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jhayward 3002 days ago
You are quoting stats on the Armed Offender squads, which are analogous to US SWAT teams.

Kim Dotcom was taken by the anti-terrorism Special Tactics Group, which is definitely not the Armed Offender Squad. They train with SAS, and are explicitly designed to take on high risk terrorist assaults. I'm asking how often they are deployed, and of course implicitly, whether serving warrants for copyright infringement is in their usual bailiwick.

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jashmatthews 3002 days ago
Yes, serving warrants and raiding gang houses is what the STG normally do in their jobs as Armed Offenders Squad officers. They're the same officers. The equipment is exactly the same. It just means it's the top few officers who get to train with the SAS.

We don't have a separate military police force in New Zealand.

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