Unlike a lot of backseat drivers who have never been to the site, I have no problem with how the police handled the inccident.  It is more than obvious that police wanted the gunman Jan Molenaar alive, otherwise AOS would storm the house before we know it. Unlike the Aramoana massacre, Molenaar snapped, but he poses no immediate threat to the public, therefore it's best to talk it out rather than end it with another life lost and put the Police in further danger.

The real problem of this tragedy, I think is the internal police procedures. I still prefer the polic to not carry any guns in daily patrols, but this incident was to carry out a search warrent, but the police failed to foresee the danger of such activity so failed to carry guns. It's the police authority failed to protect the safety of police force.

This was also the case in the death of Don Wilkinson. His fate was sealed when they decided not to carry guns.

Herald got a nice illustration on how the whole thing happened.

First, under certain circumstances police in this country has the right to shoot to incapacitate or  kill. In this case, the offender is armed and fired shots, dangerously speeding, threatening the safety of the general public, I would guess this is one of  the circumstances that justifies the use of firearms.

So the death of an innocent civilian, 17 year old Halatau Naitoko  is a case of whether the police should took more care, not the case of whether the police should fire shots in the first place.

As the Herald report shows, Naitoko's van is stopped just behind the gunman, and within the line of fire.  The situation looked like this:

Police/AOS |------|Gunman|------|Naitoko in his van

I think the key is, whether the AOS knew the car behind the gunman got  people in it or they were just too concentrated on the gunman. The police probably should took more care but I cannot see any wrongdoing in this case - police or even AOS are not Naval Seals so you should expect some of their shoots to miss, and unfortunately, Naitoko was caught in the line of fire. Gun battles may look exciting in the American TV series and Hollywood movies, but in real life, police need, and pressured to make  split-second and sometimes random decisions, and that could lead to tragic consequences.

I don't think  there's the need to charge  whoever fired that shoot as AOS were simply doing their job. This is rather an unfortunate case for both police and the Naitoko family - if the police and gunman swap places, then Naitoko could be killed by gunman rather than the police - will that make the this case easier to swallow? Probably not, as some would still blame the police for not doing enough to protect the public.

This is one of the things that happened in the wrong place, probably in the wrong time as well.

If we blame police for doing their job then next time if something similar pops up, officers will be more hesitate to fire, worrying that if he/she got wrong then he/she may end up in jail, and put themselves and general public in a greater danger.

The Naitoko family are more than entitled to receive compensations from the crown as the police is responsible for his death, police should also apologise to the family, but hold someone accountable for doing their job is bit of a step too far. You may argue that AOS and police officers should receive more training, but that's the problem of the Police as a whole, not the responsibility of individual police officers.

Xue Nai Yin's Lawyer, is seeking a bail for his client. It's not because Xue paid him enough money so the lawyer worked hard to try to get him out, it's exactly the opposite   - Xue's run out of money, his lawyer needs to get him out so he can work and pay for the fees.

See.

Aaron Deng

As the name suppression is no longer in place, I can now name the kidnapper in the Cina Ma case.

The kidnapper's name is Aaron Deng, a 25 year old real estate agent from Ray White's Pinehill branch.

What I heard is that his family is also quite wealthy and fiancially supported his study here. I understand that he's working in Ray White not because of money to support his life, but to enable him to stay here.

So I don't think he kidnapped Cina Ma for ransom. In fact, what I heard is he didn't plan to hold Cina for that long, Mr Deng just want to "give the family a warning" by hold Cina for few hours, and then release her (that's why Cina was found only a street away).

You know the rest, the police was there most of the day, and his "plan" seems to be backfired.

It is still not yet clear on what kind of dispute between those "adults" triggered the kidnap.

However, I was expecting the name of the kidnapper being released today, but instead, the name suppression of the accused was extended to 4th August. It's a subject of huge public interest, well, at least most Chinese people I know are eager to find out the name of that guy.

Compare with other countries like America or Canada, Chinese in New Zealand is a small community, so if that real estate agent did his job well, it is likely that quite a lot of us may meet him before or knew him pretty well.

I hope the court got a good reason for the name suppression. At least now it seems that the rumours will keep flying around for another week or two. before we know the kidnapper's name.

----------------

IUPDATE: I just obtained the personal details of the accused, including the name. However, as the suppression is still in place, I'm unable to publish all details here.

All I can say is, this case is not as simple as it may looks like.

However, the court also granted him name supression so we still don't know much about him.

But as New Zealand Herald reported today, this man was a real estate agent. If that's true then it's not that difficult to figure out his motive to kidnap Xin Xin. Keep in mind that Cina's both parents work in the property development business.

Quite a lot of us regard real estate agents as "some kind of evil". I think this case may just another splendid example which could be used to illustrates this point.

I heard this news around 4.25pm. A friend who works in the Chinese media told me to "listen the radio at 5".

He was informed by the liaison officer that an "important news conference" on this case will be held at 5 pm. He asked what that is about, the officer refused to go into details, but simply two words: "good news".

Although the police still did not reveal too much details of the case, I understand that Cina was not physically harmed, reasonably well, just confused on what's going on around her.

Police officially announced this news at the 5pm press conference, but still refuse to disclose details such as the motive or whether a ransom demand has been made.

Cina was reunited with her family not long after the rescue.

A 25 years old Chinese national was arrested as the result of this. This man is due to appear in North Shore District Court tomorrow, where I expect more details of this kidnap should be revealed.

Anyway, I'm glad that the kid is safe, an innocent life saved.

However, there are lots of rumours in the Chinese Community though.

Most people suspect that the kidnap was as the result of a "bad business deal".  This was also reported by most major media in the country.

The rumours I gathered seem to be confirming this. The parents of Cina Ma were described by many as "penny-pinching to the extreme", "cunning" or "out of all reasons" in business deals.

I don't want to go into specific examples here, as they are currently unverifiable. However,  it was said that only the new immigrants want to do business the them because they haven't experience "how bad they are".

Rumours are rumours. Even if they are all true, it would still never be accepted to me, and all good members of Asian community, that any business dispute should ever been dealt in this way.

People who commit crime on innocent children are despicable. They should not be tolerated and should receive the maximum punishment available. They are the thugs of our society we want to remove before any others.

The recent protest shows that we will not stand any crime, regardless of the ethnicity of the criminals.  We will not stand for crimes against our community.

My heart goes with the Cina and her family.  Hope we will see Cina back home soon.

Asians were targeted in South Auckland, but now this really starts to worry me.

The abductor was masked and there was no other known witness apart from the girl's 8 years old cousin.

However, it doesn't look like the usual "gangsters" who just want some quick cash - no ransom demand, or any other kind of news regarding the girl have been made by the abductor  at all.

Ma's home is located off the main street in a new subdivision, where there is very little traffic normally; so it is quite unlikely that the abduction/kidnap is a random action. The family must been targeted for a long time.

I'll be closely monitoring the media (and the Chinese ones) in the following days.

I did not go to protest. I do not like any protest, political group and other stuffs that is racially divided, especially on crime, which is an issue that concerns every single person of the community regardless of their ethnicity, so limit the range to just "Asians" will likely to make other people feel "it's non of our business."

Also I'm quite interested about the organiser Peter Low - my gut feeling tells me he's more than just a boat building businessman from Singapore. I'll run my own sort of background check and see if there is anything interesting pop up.

It's just a gut feeling, though.

I personally support tougher sentencing(except capital punishment), but the trend of setting up vigilante groups really worries me that the movement against crime has just gone out of course.

The suggestion of using triads to combat crime gathered considerable amount of support from Chinese community, although it's very likely a misinterpretation of what Mr Low said.

I hope this will never happen in New Zealand.

However, it is in my opinion that any vigilante groups not controlled by the government will eventually become another style of mobs and gangs.

I believe citizens has the right to take the law into their own hands - when they are personally in danger, which we call this "self defence".

But not anything beyond that.

A vigilante group without proper control is to undermining the authority of the police. This will encourage use of  excessive violence to criminals, but most importantly, to residents of the area - well unless the group runs their own jail, which is quite unlikely.

Police and Law  may not be right all the time and lock up a wrong guy, so does the vigilante group. What if the group has beaten up a wrong guy?

Vigilante action itself is not a bad thing, especially when the crime is out of control it might be the last resort to combat the crime. However, it has to be properly controlled and regulated by law, otherwise it's a huge risk to allow citizens take the law into their own hands.

If residents feel the urgent need to have such a group, it's better to found the group in the form of a security company.

I think it is still better to put a stop on this. However, the government just cannot say "stop" to stop vigilante actions - the best way to prevent citizens take the law into their own hands, is to reduce the crime level in South Auckland - there's no point to have a vigilante group if South Auckland is a  peaceful, crime free area.

However, I have no reason to panic.

If my memory serves me right, the crime rate have been gradually decreasing since the abolishment of capital punishment.

A report by New Zealand Police [PDF]showed that the homicide case number decreased in last few years, despite the population increasing.

So, please don't panic when bad things happened together. South Auckland is more like a localised problem, it should not be a nationwide panic.

Tough laws can solve crime problems in short term, but has little effect for reducing the crime in long term.

I'm very glad that people yelling on the Internet won't have a chance to actually run the country - New Zealand already has one of the world's highest incarceration rate, keep throwing people in the jail is not expected to be effective.

Jail is used to keep bad eggs away so make the rest of us safe, not the place to dump and punish the so-so ones.

Most serious offenders started his life with very little thing: wag schools, tag, car theft, burglar ... then leads on to the "bigger" job.

The problem about our system is that, the punishment for those small things can hardly be called a punishment. People won't learn if they can get away with their small offences, and then leads to the bigger ones.

What I suggest is to make those people really hurt, not just physically. Charged with a small offence like stealing is a very shameful thing back in China, those people usually hide his "shameful" past.

But here, people can tell me that he "had problems" with the police with very little hesitation.Our attitude, especially those related or close to the offenders, are too soft to make them realise that they have done anything wrong.

Huge amount of effort and time is required to change educate those with below average income and poorly educated and change their mind, but things don't just happen overnight.

For the shorter term result, tough law is still the best way to go. However, this is quite unlikely to happen as long as the Jail still looks more like the Hilton Hotel.

Taxpayers pay at least $40,000(should be much higher than this, I cannot remember) to keep an criminal stay in jail.

I have heard a very creative idea from someone, suggests that we can export those people to serve jail sentences elsewhere like Indonesia, Thailand, or China. It will cost much less and the jails there are more closer to the hell rather than the Hilton Hotel.

However, this is unlikely to happen because of the human rights issues.

What people should really realise is that, when a criminal committed an offence to someone else, he/she automatically gives up some of his/her own human rights.

Sure the jailed still have the right to food and warmth, but using floor heating system rather than an extra layer of quilt is just sending the wrong message to those people.