Officers ‘metres’ from gunfire

Police officers were listening just metres away from a camp where semi-automatic weapons were fired and military manoeuvres performed, the High Court at Auckland was told yesterday.

The Crown alleges four people at the camp were members of a group planning to use guerrilla warfare to establish self-governance in the Tuhoe region in the eastern Bay of Plenty.

A police senior constable, whose identity is suppressed, told the court he heard semi-automatic gunfire while police set up motion detection devices in the Ruatoki valley in November 2006.

He said he went to check on one of the detectors, which kept going off soon after it had been turned on, and on the way back he heard the ‘‘racking’’ of weapons being

‘‘I could hear someone yelling out for instance ‘bang bang bang bang’, simulating gunfire. Commands like ‘fall-out, fall-out’, ‘go, go, go, go’.’’ Senior constable

loaded. Then he heard a ‘‘volley of shots being fired from a semiautomatic weapon’’.

The officer said from the sound of the shots he could tell it was a ‘‘big, thumping weapon’’.

‘‘You could hear a magazine being ripped out of a chamber and another magazine being put in. And then more shots.’’

He said he was between 50 and 100 metres away from the gunfire.

‘‘That close. Maybe a couple of hundred metres, max.’’

He could hear military-type commands being shouted.

‘‘I could hear someone yelling out for instance ‘bang bang bang bang’, simulating gunfire. Commands like ‘fall-out, fall-out’, ‘go, go, go, go’.’’

The gunfire continued for about an hour, he said, and during that time he also heard a weapon with a silencer on it being fired.

The policeman was the third witness in the Crown case against Tame Iti, Emily Bailey, Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara and Urs Signer, who are accused of illegally possessing firearms and participating in an organised criminal group. They have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Kemara’s lawyer, Nicholas Taylor, questioned the officer over whether it really was possible to tell what type of gun was being fired, given the distance he was from it and how many shots were going off at once.

The officer replied that you can tell the difference between types of guns, depending on their size and power.

Mr Taylor also questioned how the officer could have heard a gun with a silencer on it. The policeman replied that was a distinctive noise, but admitted that it could be confused with an airgun going off.

Yesterday afternoon the jury was shown footage of what Crown lawyer Ross Burns said was the January 2007 ‘‘camp’’.

The images showed figures walking through the bush holding what appeared to be guns.

Earlier yesterday Detective Inspector Geoff Jago, who was in charge of surveillance at the alleged camps, was questioned about placing hidden cameras at a controversial historical site.

Tame Iti’s lawyer, Russell Fairbrother, asked Mr Jago whether he deliberately decided to place hidden cameras on the ‘‘confiscation line’’ in Ruatoki.

Mr Jago replied: ‘‘There was no conscious decision for that camera to be placed on the confiscation line.’’

Mr Fairbrother said on Tuesday that the confiscation line was a controversial site for Maori. It was the place where many Tuhoe people were pushed off their land in 1866, he said.

Yesterday the jury asked the judge whether the ‘‘confiscation line’’ could be better explained to them. Justice Rodney Hansen said as the trial progressed the term and its historical context would be further explained.