Wait after attack riles fire chief

Two firefighters were left bloodied when a drunken mob attacked them at the scene of a car crash and the Waihi Beach fire chief has criticised police after the weekend assault.

Peter Harwood’s fire crew were first to arrive after a two-car crash in the town about 8pm on Saturday.

Soon after a group of young, drunk and angry locals turned up and tried to pick a fight with one of the parties involved in the crash, he said.

“It was basically a straightforward car accident where there was one party more at fault,” Harwood said.

“We’ve got that time of year where there’s parties going on in the weekend and somebody knows somebody else who sends out a text and the next thing you know some locals are down there, fuelled up, ready to cause trouble. Whether they were doing it out of a sense of justice or whatever I don’t know but . . . of course, well, we have to stop them.”

A couple of his crew were on the receiving end of a few jabs as they tried to keep the drunken intruders from entering the crash scene.

The incident had riled locals, who expressed anger and disappointment on social media, with one saying “assaulting firefighters about as low as you can go. Absolutely disgusting. Hope they see these comments and go and apologise”, while another said it happened outside her house.

“All young locals in both cars. There were a number of fights between them which we were constantly breaking up, too much alcohol and testosterone!” the comment said.

“The firefighters were there en masse, did a fantastic job, cops took hours to get there, they were snowed under with crate-day incidents.”

Harwood said: “It wasn’t that bad . . . it was just a matter of defusing the situation”. But he said it wasn’t firefighters’ jobs to protect a crash scene — and the bigger issue was the lack of policing in the area.

“I think there’s a message here. “What’s really disappointing is that they took our local police away from us. Now, Waihi Beach and Athenree is a dynamic, growing area and I don’t know where the decision came from, further up the chain, I imagine.

“They took our local police away from us and they sent them to Paeroa and that was a really sad day and a really short-sighted day,” he said.

“I think the police nationally need to look at putting constables back into our small town.”

Waikato police began a review of the number of its stations and officers in 2015, resulting in officers being transferred to other areas.

Compounding police response time was the fact a slip had blocked both lanes of the Waikino Gorge, State Highway 2, meaning the closest officer had to travel from Whangamata, about 20 minutes away.

But once trouble started unfolding and St John Ambulance staff put out an alert “all of a sudden when that went out there were police for Africa”.

“But . . . if they had been present from the get-go, sometimes just the presence of police can make people back off and I think that’s the message that I would like to get out”.

Harwood said an incident like this one was unusual, but not surprising.

Waikato police area commander Superintendent Bruce Bird said Waihi Beach had staff available 24/7 and he was comfortable with how his officers had been deployed.

“Small towns like Waihi Beach now have officers available 24/7, and the nearby Waihi station is fully staffed.

“Additionally, the announcement of 1800 new police earlier this year means we will be adding 127 officers across the Waikato district, in both urban and rural communities.”

Minister of Internal Affairs and NZ First MP Tracey Martin, who oversees Fire and Emergency, was appalled to hear of the incident and said she would talk to Police Minister Stuart Nash today. Two people involved in the crash suffered minor injuries.