‘Excessive secrecy’ over shooting plan
Threats of extreme violence in schools are increasing and they are not being taken seriously, a concerned MP says.
National list MP Nick Smith asked Police Minister Poto Williams during parliamentary questioning if she was briefed about a planned school shooting in the Tasman area, after it was reported last December.
Williams said she didn’t believe it was in the public interest to answer, a stance Smith said was ‘‘excessively secretive’’.
‘‘I’m worried that there is an excessive level of secrecy about these risks when we should be more open about the problem and particularly encouraging students and families that see concerning material on social media to report it.’’
After a lengthy suppression battle, it was reported last December that a teenager with a shotgun, a militarystyle semi-automatic rifle and homemade bombs was caught with plans to carry out a mass shooting at the school in the Tasman area.
The self-described terrorist talked to peers about blowing up the stage in the school’s hall during assembly, then shooting people.
Williams’ office said the minister was not briefed about the incident when news broke last December. Williams declined to provide a reason why and said it was an ‘‘operational matter’’ for police.
Williams was not police minister when the incident occurred in 2019.
Smith said an ‘‘awful tragedy’’ was averted because a family had alerted authorities about disturbing social media posts and police eventually took action. ‘‘It was a close call. We need to be upfront that the radicalisation through the global social media can put our own school communities at risk.
‘‘I worry that the police are being so secretive in the way in which they responded to the incident because they did not take it seriously enough, early enough.’’
He said New Zealanders looked in horror at the repeated mass shootings at schools and universities in the United States, but we were not immune from such attacks.
Police national security investigations manager Detective Inspector Sean Hansen said Government agencies had conducted a number of assessments of the threat of terrorism in New Zealand.
‘‘These can be for a broad range of potential harm arising from criminal behaviour, or concerns arising from a particular incident or event.’’
These were not usually focused on specific locations, but assessments were done at educational sites from time to time.
‘‘It should be noted that these threats, while harmful in themselves, are almost always found to be without substance. Irrespective of the outward form of the threat, they are also not usually related to terrorism.’’
He said there was ‘‘no information to suggest any specific risk to public safety’’ regarding the Tasman incident.
Police refused to answer questions under the Official Information Act about how many incidents at education facilities it responded to in the last 10 years that involved threats of serious violence, due to the data not being readily available without substantial collation and effort to assemble. The identity of the teen and the name of the school cannot be reported.
Smith also expressed concern over increasing threats of serious violence in education facilities.
He was aware of at least two other less serious threats at schools in the same district since this incident.
There had also been publicly reported incidents at Wellington High School and Otago University last year that disrupted graduation ceremonies.
Dr John Battersby, a teaching fellow in the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University and a specialist on terrorism and counter-terrorism, said situations like the one in the Tasman area formed ‘‘wickedly complicated dilemmas’’, where in hindsight things looked straightforward and there was a tendency for people to say ‘‘I told you so’’.
Battersby said the reality was that law enforcement agencies in democratic societies could not arrest or detain people for offences they had not committed.
‘‘In New Zealand if police arrest
‘‘It was a close call. We need to be upfront that the radicalisation through the global social media can put our own school communities at risk.’’
Nick Smith
someone, they must have reasonable grounds to believe that person has committed an offence, and if they proceed in court or charge that person they do so with the belief they have sufficient evidence to prove the offence beyond reasonable doubt.’’
He said in the last 20 years, the emergence of ‘‘sole actor, sole act’’ mass killers had led to significant developments in terrorist/counter-terrorist legislative frameworks.
Security agencies had been granted greater resources and powers to pry into the private lives of people and investigate planning or intent based offences – or to detain without charge for periods of time while a suspected offence was being investigated. ‘‘In New Zealand, we have not developed any counter-terrorism legislation along these lines. I have seen no evidence that Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 is any use at all, except for prosecuting an alleged terrorist after the fact.’’
Where New Zealand has apprehended suspects believed to be on a trajectory towards something like the Tasman example, the person has either committed some more minor criminal offence empowering police to act, or a multiagency intervention by consent of the individual (and their families) has developed. ‘‘Unknown to most New Zealanders there have been a small number of unheralded successes in this respect. We will, of course, never know if left alone, these individuals would have done anything at all.’’