Last week I posted that the New Zealand Police were putting their relationship of trust with the public at risk through the creation of Armed Response Teams covering fully a third of all New Zealanders. Already this week they are having to defend the use of just such a team for pulling over an unarmed man who was being in relation to a… “dishonesty offence”.

This is a long way from the promise that the teams – who are, for the first time in our history, routinely armed police on duty 24/7 – have been created to respond to events where the public or staff were in “significant risk”. Sure, the October 18 police statement announcing this watershed six month trial in three districts said the teams would also be used to “support the execution of pre-planned and high-risk search warrants, high-profile public events and prevention activities”. And today police bosses were quick to describe this car stop as an act of prevention.

However if you look back to the context of the statement and the initial announcement, Commissioner Mike Bush talked about the Christchurch mosque attacks, extending the activities of the Armed Offenders’ Squad and the three districts for the trial being chosen because “they have the highest number of firearms seized, located and surrendered”. The impression was that these teams were being created to be ready for the big stuff. That talk of prevention meant preventing loss of life.

Y’know, when the public was at “significant risk”.

But it seems those words tacked on at the end – “prevention activities” – do not have to have much connection to those “significant risks”, after all. It seems, now, that these teams are there to be used to save us all from the significant danger posed by those who have committed “dishonesty offences”.

Yes, the man stopped was wanted by police for those offences and known to have carried firearms in the past, but none were found when he was spoken to by the ART. He was arrested to face charges for those dishonest offences, but events unfolded without incident.

RNZ broke the story today and comments by Deputy Commissioner John Tims and Police Association head Chris Cahill were quite revealing when they defended the use of an ART to pull over a person who wasn’t involved in any criminal activity at the time.

Tims said, well, of course if an ART was out patrolling team members would get involved if it was to “come across something they need to deal with”. Cahill went a little further, saying that while the teams were there to be ready for “those top end things… I don't think anyone would expect that they should just sit around and do nothing all day”

“There’s plenty of other lower risk, but still risk events, that it’s appropriate for them to be involved in”.

So the police position on the need for armed police has, within three weeks, gone from “ARTs will complement our initial response to critical or high risk incidents” to they will be useful to deal with ‘things they come across’. Or, as Cahill said: “I don't think anyone would expect that they should just sit around and do nothing all day”.

That’s some rapid mission creep right there. While Tims in his interview with Morning Report today said several times police wanted feedback from New Zealanders, a cynic might start to think the police were already half-decided to roll this out further after the trial. Beyond the third of New Zealanders now being policed by ‘routinely armed’ police to the whole country.

Actually, you don’t need to be a cynic. You just need to be former police officer and ex-Minister of Courts and ex-Associate Minister of Justice, Chester Borrows. He told RNZ, “I can't see them winding it back. I don't think they would have done it to start with if they didn't think they were going to carry on with it, quite honestly."

Quite honest, indeed. Yet Tims was still insisting this morning that “we want them [the public] to have that trust with us”.

Problem is, if they do rolled out armed police nationally in six months time, it now feels like that was the intention all along. That we’ve been lulled into armed police like that frog in the pot of water as it is slowly turned up. Tragically, this use of weapons on their hips is already undermining what is truly the New Zealand Police’s greatest weapon – public trust.

Which is why it is untenable for Police Minister Stuart Nash to dismiss this as an operational matter. Since the police announced this trial – something he would have been briefed on in advance – he has insisted this is a decision for police bosses and something he cannot and should not be involved in.

That argument has as many holes in it as a training target for the presumably very accurate ARTs. The introduction of routinely armed police in districts that encompass more than 1.5 million New Zealanders is not merely operational. It is a social watershed; a deeply political decision that changes not just police operations, but the way we live and our expectations as citizens. It changes one of the key relationships between the state and its citizens. To deny that is to be either naive or stupid, and Nash is neither.

If Nash thought his position was defensible before, Chester Borrows’ comments have surely changed that. Consider this: The man this government appointed to lead a group tasked with reform of the justice system, has now said the widespread arming of police is being sold to us through a ‘trial’ with a pre-determined outcome. Burrow’s committee has the job of lowering offending and re-offending rates “and fixing things so we can have safer Kiwi communities”, according to Justice Minister Andrew Little.

If, as he alleges, the police are using a trial to soften us up for something they’ve already decided, the politicians need to listen and take his words seriously. Is he correct? They appointed him, so they obviously trust his judgment. So surely Nash must demand answers from police, share what he finds and start a conversation with citizens about the arming of police.

Little said in establishing the advisory group, that "This government believes New Zealand should be the best place in the world to live and raise a family. Our justice system must play its part in that.”

So is routinely arming police a step toward or away from that goal? Will it make for safer Kiwi communities? Or not? The answers are undoubtedly political ones, not one merely for police to decide.

It is time for government ministers to step up and realise the police decision to use armed officers to pull over unarmed drivers so they are not ‘just sitting around all day’ is a game-changer, as are allegations by their top justice advisor that police are trying to sneak in routinely armed police without genuine consultation. This is no longer merely an operational matter.