The police praised the residents who got up to the solitary officer confronted at work

Manawatu’s commander inspector Ross Grantham praised the community for helping a solitary police officer confronted at work.
Photo: RNZ / ALEXANDER ROBERTSON

Police praised the Feilding community after the public helped a policeman dodge a “potentially dangerous situation” when she was confronted at work.

The policeman was called to Lethbridge Street shortly after 2 pm, after reports of a group of people fighting.

Manawatu’s commander inspector Ross Grantham said that when the policeman came across the fight, she was able to reduce the situation between two women.

He said that while talking to the pair, a man appeared and approached aggressively.

“He just appeared and confronted the policeman while she was trying to deal with the other two who were fighting,” Grantham said.

“As you can imagine when a third person gets involved, you just want to take a little more caution. He did nothing more than to be verbally aggressive with the officer.”

Grantham praised the public for being able to help the officer, keeping safe for not being involved.

“A person was filming the incident and when they told him to stop shooting for the attackers, that person simply answered ‘I’m not filming you, I’m filming to the policeman’ and so it was amazing to see the audience responding to help my policeman.

“And also other public members arrived on their phones and played 111,” said Grantham.

It arrived back to 10 minutes after police notification about the policeman being aggressively confronted.

Grantham said he discovered the incident on Sunday and had a good interrogation with her about what happened.

“She feels comfortable what she did and how she was feeling about it later, because obviously later is the time when it affects the most, but she was doing very well,” said Grantham.

He said he is happy with the way the situation was resolved.

“She works alone, as a road policing officer that is not uncommon.

“We have implemented our team based on risk assessment and occasions that they go out alone …

“Our communication centers have good situational awareness and regular check-in with our team that is working alone, so I’m comfortable with the way we are operating,” said Grantham.

An 35 -year -old woman and an 18 -year -old woman were arrested and accused of aggression.

They were scheduled to attend the Palmerston North District Court on Thursday.

An 18 -year -old man was also accused of driving while disqualified. The vehicle he was driving was seized and seized.

He should attend court on April 24.

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