Stats on assaults of Police officers

A couple of months ago some of the usual suspects said that the Police should be defunded and not armed etc because most of the people shot by the Police have been Maori or PI.

Of the 21 people killed by Police between 1990 and 2015, seven are European, nine Maori, three Pacific and two others. Now I personally didn’t thunk the Police are shooting people because they are Maori, but because they were posing a threat to Police or others.

It got me wondering about the other side of the equation. What is the breakdown by ethnicity of those who have killed or assaulted police officers. So I asked the Police and they have responded.

There have been eight (now nine) officers killed since 1990 and the ethnicity of the killers is three Maori, two Europeans, one Pacific and two unknowns. So at least half of those who have killed Police are Maori or Pacific – much the same ratio as those killed by Police.

Not enough data to reach much of a conclusion but the assault data is more robust as there has been a shockingly high 16,000 assaults on police officers since 2010.

The ethnicity breakdown of people assaulting police officers is:

• Maori 50% (17% of pop)
• European 39% (70% of pop)
• Pacific 9% (9% of pop)
• Asian 2% (15% of pop)

No doubt the usual suspects will somehow also blame the Police for being assaulted so often by Maori and Pacific offenders!