Feelings alone are a poor guide

Our terror threat level is now down to medium. The nation is deemed not to be holding itself in the same level of reactive tension that was needed straight after the March 15 terror attack. Back to normal? The new normal is a shade darker than the old. Our sense of vulnerability has shifted from the largely theoretical to the horribly memorable.

Some of the remaining measures of heightened vigilance, like Christchurch’s university graduation parade not going ahead and Anzac Day services being more protectively huddled together, may prove finite.

But longer-term, we face decisions of long-term importance, such as the tolerances made in the name of free speech and routinely armed police.

The threat level downgrade means most frontline officers will no longer need to be armed. But when Police Association boss Chris Cahill notes, plausibly enough, that the public reaction to the sight of police carrying intimidating weapons has been accepting, this surely gives traction to the mounting case for routinely arming the police, right?

Careful. It’s a little worrying that the association has been pushing the case for arming so hard when it knows that it has anecdotal reports but, by its own admission, not good data. Neither does anyone else, mind you. Granted, there’s international data for

comparative purposes, semi-reassuring stats that New Zealand crime, including firearms offences, has been tracking downwards for three decades, and make-of-this-what-you-will research suggesting older, more experienced police officers tend to be more against arming than their younger colleagues.

Some research suggests that if officers have access to locked arms in their cars or a nearby station it gives them a chance to step back and think a little more on the best tactical approach.

Then again, a case can be put that if police have weapons on them it simply removes an unnecessary extra stressor – they can be reacting to the moment without also figuring out whether they should be (or should already have been) heading back to the lockbox.

So information to support any alreadyheld view, whatever it may be, is out there. But implacable New Zealand data? Not so much.

The data does appear to be gettable, just not readily to hand when we need it. Which might be ironic, because the same could be said for the police firearm back in the patrol car lockbox.

As things stand the case for arming the police can’t be proven any more compellingly than the case against it.

Unless, that is, we’re willing to make that decision on the basis of how we feel about the level of risk, not what we really know. Let’s not do that.