Bite ‘just part of job’
Senior Constable Dennis Buijtendijk was on a standard arrest callout with his partner in January – ‘‘it was business as usual’’, he says.
The pair turned up to the house in Patea, Taranaki, and picked up the man they were there for, before finding a second man hiding inside.
‘‘He was breaching his bail. While in the process of arresting that person they sank their teeth into my bicep.
‘‘If you’re a weather man you expect to stand outside in the wind and the rain sometimes, and you don’t enjoy it, but it’s just part of the job, and sometimes police get assaulted.’’
Buijtendijk remembers the incident as being slightly surreal, ‘‘like a car crash’’, and says everything slowed down while he decided what to do.
‘‘My initial thought was should I Taser him? But if I Tasered him he would have bitten down even harder.’’
He tried to prise the man off, which only resulted in his thumb also being bitten.
‘‘My fellow officer gave him a spray with pepper spray, and we subdued him and locked him up.
‘‘I’ve been in the job 25 years and I’ve never been seriously injured at all – this was the first serious assault, so I like to think I usually judge situations relatively well.’’
Buijtendijk says he had known the assailant for 15 years and never had an issue, and the man apologised at the station.
Buijtendijk required a tetanus shot and two follow-up blood tests, and is left with a scar.
The hassle and paperwork involved with charging for an assault meant a lot of police didn’t bother. Buijtendijk estimates the total number of assaults could be double what the official figures put them at.
‘‘You might have a month where there’s a few guys who’ve been hurt, and then you might have a lull where there’s a period of time where not very much happens.’’
He has been in the force for 25 years, and says there hasn’t been a day in that time when he felt untouchable.
‘‘So you just have to accept a certain amount that people are going to be unpredictable, and you minimise the risk as much as you can.’’