It is not often that I praise the NZ Police, but this article in today's paper deserves mention. It is a good example of the shoot as a last resort approach.
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Police officer commended over shooting
A police officer has not only been cleared of wrongdoing for fatally shooting a man, but his actions have been commended by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA).
Haidar Ebbadi Mahdi was shot in the head by police after pepper spray and three gunshot wounds to the leg failed to stop him from repeatedly stabbing his wife in their Pakuranga home, in Auckland.
An investigation by the PCA found that two days prior to the August 2004 incident Mahdi was found to be suffering from a paranoid schizophrenia for which, against doctors' recommendations he had refused to taken medication.
On the day of the shooting Mahdi's wife, Maryam Abed, found her husband sharpening a knife.
She told the PCA Mahdi grabbed her and held her hands behind her back and said to her "I'm going to kill you today, I want to kill you today".
Mahdi accused Mrs Abed of killing his brother, who was actually killed in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime.
Mrs Abed was cut several times as she tried to wrench the knife from her husband.
Upon seeing the blood Mahdi called 111 and told the ambulance service he had cut his wife "1001 times".
Police were then contacted by the dispatcher who sent a dog handler, known as Officer 1, and two constables, referred to as Officers 2 and 3, to the scene.
The officers found Mahdi and Mrs Abed in their lounge, whereupon Mahdi moved quickly towards his wife holding the knife. Officer 1 sprayed Mahdi with pepper spray, with no effect.
Mahdi then attacked Officer 1 and cut his arm so deeply the wounds required surgery.
All officers then retreated to the kitchen and had to stop Mahdi from following by leaning against the door between the lounge and kitchen.
Officer 1, who was holding a pistol, said they heard screams from Mrs Abed so re-entered the lounge. Mahdi was holding his wife in a headlock and had the knife near her throat.
Officer 1 three times told Mahdi to "drop the knife", and when that failed, he shot Mahdi three times in the leg.
Officer 1 said he hoped the shots "would distract him sufficiently to drop the knife, let the lady go and give us an opening to perhaps physically overpower him".
The gunshots appeared to have no effect on Mahdi who used Mrs Abed as a shield as he walked towards the officers, slashing his wife on the top of her head.
"At that point I really feared for her life," Officer 1 said.
"I thought she was about to die and at that point is when I decided I had to do something which was going to stop the situation immediately and I raised the gun, took an aimed shot at his head and fired one round and he immediately dropped to the ground."
In their recently released report, the PCA found that in shooting Mahdi, Officer 1 acted lawfully and properly.
"The authority regards Officer 1's handling of this violent and stressful situation as commendable.
"There can be no dispute that, but for the intervention of the police, at demonstrated risk to themselves, this incident would almost certainly have resulted in the death or grievous bodily harm, at Mr Mahdi's hands, of his wife."
