by Rachel Stewart

How are you feeling about the NZ Police right now? Trusting?

I haven’t exactly been feeling great about them ever since the ‘Cuddles’ Coster-led blue boys turned up at my door in 2021, and even put their foot in it, to confiscate my firearms and licence for a tweet. Oh, and not to mention how they treated the people who dared to protest at Parliament over covid mandates.

And, yeah, I’m pretty squarely on record for questioning and relentlessly criticising the trans movement and I’m pretty darn sure history will show what many of us have always known. You can’t change sex, and puberty blockers – and as of this week any new prescriptions will finally be banned – were always a satanic money-making scheme purely designed to eff up our kids and our collective minds. But could you question it? No, you could not. The NZ Police became the fascist arm of the Labour Government under Jacinda Ardern.

Anyway, I digress. For today’s purposes I want to talk about how the NZ Police have landed where they are right now. In the public’s mind, the Jevon McSkimming affair – and subsequent cover up – is as fresh in our minds as a runny dawn cow patty. And our level of respect is higher for the cow patty.

But, you know, the scandals have been endless over the decades. Think Louse Nicholas, and the conduct of her police tormentors Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum. Think Teina Pora and the police stitch-up over the murder and rape of Susan Burdett – despite no physical evidence – he was locked up for years.  And the recent revelation that 120 officers are facing investigation for the falsification of over 30,000 breath tests. I could go on and on, but you get the picture. While all are unrelated surely the lesson being passed down from the top brass to the frontline is that ‘due process’ is optional rather than mandatory.

And the worry is that it’s almost never just a case of a few rogue cops. It’s the subsequent cover-up of their crimes that is reminiscent of the ‘bros before hoes’ mentality you see in gangs. And I think that’s where many of us sit now. We view the boys (and the misguided girls) in blue as a bloody big gang with enormous powers to make one’s life a misery.

Now that the trans cult is starting to ebb, my largest personal concern is how the NZ Police will be fair and accountable around dealing with lawful firearms owners like me. Because, as demonstrated, if even one cop gets a snitcher against somebody it is a lever they can easily pull to specifically target them.

It is of some solace to therefore to see the police stripped of their responsibility in looking after the Firearms Safety Authority. They are the regulators – overseeing licences, the controversial gun registry, and currently it sits within the police and reports to the Police Minister. But not for much longer.

Minister Nicole McKee has overseen the changes, and they are far less radical then many anticipated. She has previously been on record saying she wanted to scrap the gun registry altogether – citing trust issues over data accessing has seen personal information end up in the wrong hands – but that will not be happening.

“There will be a clearer separation of information held by the firearms regulator, and information held by police. Sworn officers will not be able to serve as either chief executive or be directly employed by the regulator,” she says.

There will be some small tweaks around the type of information that’s held in the registry. Police have enjoyed the ability to add anything they want about a person. This will be removed. But then there will also be a new ‘red flag’ system, with information sharing so that police and other agencies can inform the firearms regulator when they have relevant intel that might trigger a review of whether a licensed firearms owner remains a “fit and proper person”. Hmmm, so the police could still interfere if they so choose? Hopefully, it will create much more paperwork for them, which may negate their burning desire to do so.

Of course, coming unannounced to my home and uplifting my licence and firearms created an expensive and annoying scenario for me to then have to prove I was a “fit and proper person” to hold a firearms licence simply because of my views on trans rights. Here we are tipping into the realm of free speech and how particular governments can and have weaponised the police, and that is deeply concerning.

The process can be stacked against firearms owners and in my case it was. I had to find the money and the will to fight back, and I won. But it was stressful, time-consuming, unfair, and enormously reputationally damaging. It was done purely as revenge for holding certain views and was led by trans activists and their supporters within the NZ Police.

Finally, trust must be earned and when the NZ Police decided to get political around the rainbow alphabet they seriously shot themselves in the foot, so to speak.

I’ll leave you with this guy, one senior Sargeant Rhona Stace. He likes to think he’s a policewoman, and his existence partially explains what happened to me, and the debacle in Albert Park in Auckland when Posie Parker barely escaped unscathed from the teeming rainbow masses, and other women were assaulted just for showing up to listen to her views.

Listen to the full episode of Riding Shotgun here.