I'm pretty annoyed with the New Zealand population generally today, and a incident this afternoon reinforced my feelings.
I emerged from a shop in the local shopping centre, and found that my waiting family had seen an unpleasant incident. A group of young males had hurled racial abuse at the Asian family who own another nearby shop, and had then thrown stones at them. The family called the Police.
Being a civic-minded sort of character, I made my partner tell the arriving Police officer that he'd seen the incident, in case this could be useful. The Police officer sneered, 'Catching the little bastards would be useful to me' - this is front of my two small children, who got to see two instances of poor behaviour in rapid succession. My partner and I stood there feeling foolish for having tried to help, then went home.
The incident didn't offend me, but it called into question the judgment and social skills of the Police officer, I felt. Is this the sort of guy you'd want handling a sensitive situation, like domestic or sexual violence?
2 comments:
I don't think the second incident is really in the same ballpark as the first though is it? I feel quite sorry for the police, they have a pretty thankless task. I'm sure the guy was saying that out of frustration and wasn't meaning to cause offence.
It's not that it's in the same ballpark. It's that you need to show really good judgment, particularly in how to deal appropriately with people, to be able to do the broad array of work that makes up policing. You can't afford to make a hash of it by saying something insensitive or out of place.
Post a Comment