This article by Te Rangikaiwhiria was originally published in the book '
The day the raids came' - by the good people at
Rebel Press
Go back to Sunday, 14 October 2007: the night before the raids. I had been in bed all day. I had hurt my back the day before, so I spent the whole day lying down. I was watching these undercover cars going past, wondering what the hell was going on out there. The day before our
neighbours had been in a huge fight, and they had wrecked their place, so I assumed that the cops were looking at them. I was inside my caravan, parked just in front of Tuhoe Lambert’s house in Manurewa.
About 4.30 in the morning, I woke up to a couple of cars sitting outside; again, I assumed it was the neighbours because of the events that
had taken place. Tuhoe and his wife Aida were awake. They always woke
up at about 4.30 in the morning and had a cup of tea. I went back inside
the caravan and lay down. More and more cars were arriving outside and
parking down the street.
Where the caravan was situated, it was like a sound shell; I could hear
everything. There was an enormous noise and a whole lot of shouting. I
could hear the cops yelling at the neighbours. I thought they were raiding them; it seemed like a full-on bloody raid. But as their voices became
clearer, I could hear that they were actually telling the neighbours
to get back in the house. It took a minute or two before I suddenly
realised: No, they are actually raiding me—raiding us. I stepped outside the
caravan. In my initial shock, it seemed that the sky had been lit up with
stars. It was, in fact, the police lights on the front of their guns that lit up
the place; it was almost like standing in a glowworm cave.
Almost every corner of the property had guys with guns hanging
over the fence. The cops were on the megaphone yelling for me to come
out. As I was about to step out from behind the caravan there were armed
officers on either side, right around in a semi-circle. The ones that were
on my left were yelling that I had a gun in my hand, which was crap. It was
one of those situations that either I stepped out and got nailed, or they
would come around the corner and nail me. So I had this little thought to
yell out that I had no gun. I thought that would ruin their day, and make
things more difficult. I said about three or four times that there was no
gun. ‘No gun. No gun. No gun,’ I said and then stepped out from behind
the caravan.
At this point I was escorted out by armed men. They were not your
average armed offenders. You see the AOS on TV all the time. These
people were another level up. They were an elite squad brought in for this
particular raid. They did the first part of the raid. They brought me out
and lined me up against the fence outside. Then about five minutes later
everyone who was in the house was brought out. There were quite a few
people staying at the house because there had been a family gathering the
night before. We ended up lining up right down the block, about half the
street. We were placed down against the fence, handcuffed and forced to
kneel down on the pavement. There was an armed officer standing behind each one of us with a rifle to our head.
Tuhoe’s partner, Aida, became very agitated because the younger
people had firearms to the backs of their heads. She began to voice her
opinion about that quite strongly. The police reaction of course was to
try and shut everyone up, but they were unable to silence that kuia. It
was obviously a distressing thing for everyone involved, but much more
distressing to see children put through that process.
We were handcuffed with those little plastic cuffs. Then it started to
rain quite hard. It was pouring down. Not only were we kneeling there
against the fence with all the neighbours watching and dozens and dozens of very hyped-up crazy police behind us yelling and screaming, but
it started pissing down rain. I was thinking, Gee, I wish I had put on a
raincoat before coming out.
The cops then tried their separation techniques. They put us in
different areas to try to coerce a quick confession or to achieve whatever
they were trying do. I had seen this type of thing in the past. It had happened to other people. I had also been through something similar to this
once before and had seen the type of destruction these cops can do. They
are so amped up; they will go to any length to achieve what they want.
They were looking for firearms. They wanted to search the car. I could
have sat back and said, ‘Stuff you, you’re not going to get anything from
me,’ but they would just break everything—break the caravan, break the
house, break the car. So when I was trying to explain where my car keys
were, I said, ‘They are right there by my firearms licence.’ That is when the
next big dialogue took place. One of the officers was quite adamant that
there was no way I had a firearms licence. It occurred to me then that they
had obviously mis-instructed these guys in order to get them so heightened and amped up, and oddly enough, almost shaking in their boots.
It was kind of strange for me; really it should have been the other way
around, and for part of the time, it was. I noticed the dissipation of their
anxiety the moment that they realised that they had been misinformed.
It was almost like letting the air out of a balloon. It was like night and day
between two different events and the attitudes of the officers.
After that, they were exchanged out; the commando cops were
pulled out and replaced with the ‘normal’ armed offenders squad. The
second team of about 15 to 20 cops came in, and they were wearing the
‘normal’ armed offenders black garb. They maintained the scene until the
detectives who had obviously ordered the whole thing turned up. Once
they took over, the armed offenders were pulled out, and a whole lot of
armed police in blue uniforms turned up. So there were three entirely different sets of police at the place.
At that point, I didn’t realise that a whole lot more people had been
arrested. I thought someone must have complained to the cops because
they saw one of my hunting rifles being loaded into or unloaded from my
car. I hadn’t worked out exactly what was the purpose behind this entire
masquerade, until I was questioned by one of the detectives, Hamish McDonald.
He said, ‘We are going to charge you with unlawful possession of
firearms.’
And I said something along the lines of, ‘Unlawful possession? How is
it possible that I can unlawfully possess firearms that I lawfully bought?’
The thought hadn’t really crossed my mind at the time that such a
thing was possible, but apparently it was. That of course was all within the
thinking that maybe someone must have complained.
Then McDonald said, ‘We also want to question you about terrorism.’
Then I thought, Whoa. Hang on. That’s not a neighbour complaining
about a firearm being loaded into the car out of my gun vault. We are talking about the silly stuff now. It was then that I had to resign myself to the
fact that this was going to be a long one; it was not going to be an in’n’out
today event. They had gone beyond the issue of whether something was
criminal or not, they had stepped into the political realm of silly irrationality and illogical absolutism.