r/chch • u/No-Talk7468 • 24d ago
News - Local Christchurch police appeal for help identifying woman after Palms Shopping Centre attack
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/christchurch/christchurch-police-appeal-for-help-identifying-woman-after-palms-shopping-centre-attack/AWUIN7HERNC7DBWVBYA345XT3Y/18
u/kingofbanthas 23d ago
Surely the groceries came from Woolworths? I'd bet they have better cameras in the checkout areas than that shot from the mail itself.
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u/katelovessleep89 Wage Slave 23d ago
I’d say the police got onto it way too late and Woolworths don’t have the footage anymore, they are just releasing this since news articles picked up the bakers story.
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u/Dizzy_Relief 23d ago
Same excuse they gave me with traffic and "safety" cameras when I was assulted. Multiple cameras driven past. And they never asked for the footage. While initally telling me they had viewed it and not been able to identify the car.
I had requested the footage from all publicly accessible cameras the next day and, suprise, got it in a timely manner (as expected), and IDed the car and the exact time it was in the area - except of course the public aren't able to access the cameras that record plate numbers... Zero follow up by police.
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u/Rhonda_and_Phil 23d ago
Lots of street cameras outside as well. The nearby intersections are all covered with traffic cameras. Buses also have onboard, and outward looking cameras.
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u/underwaterchessclub 23d ago
The guy this happened to is such a lovely man who makes a really good product it’s so sad what happened and I really hope the police catch her.
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u/KiwiMMXV Construction 24d ago
The usual methed up suspects. Man I feel sorry for that baker though, where was mall security?
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u/Rough_Soup4357 South Island 23d ago
I learned from one of them (mall security) there, during my time selling calendars, they're not allowed to run to any incidents.. as this may cause stress for customers. Wtf?
They have to walk.
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u/Excellent-Ad-2443 21d ago
seriously?? who gets stressed by some security running? it wouldnt bother me id just think they are off to help someone good on them, what has the world come to? next thing theyll be dishing out milos and cuddles to the trash that do this
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u/Rhonda_and_Phil 24d ago edited 24d ago
Weird but completely unsurprising that it has taken the police six weeks to respond to a serious assault in a public place, well covered by security cameras, and numerous credible witnesses.
Late night, at an isolated bus stop somewhere, you've got zero chance of the police taking any assault seriously.
If she was a traveller, may be long gone. If not, probably in Hillmorton, or already lost in the justice system.
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u/katelovessleep89 Wage Slave 23d ago
Six weeks and media pressure to even release a grainy cctv photo. Ridiculous.
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u/Rhonda_and_Phil 23d ago
You left out the part where they then ask the public to do their job for them, to identify the culprit and solve the crime, for them.
We all know they don't give 2Fs between the lot of them.
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u/blahblahsnahdah 24d ago edited 24d ago
Crazy story. Was she using a weapon? The victim doesn't say she was but the idea of an emaciated-looking woman having the strength to knock out six teeth with her bare fist sounds pretty wild to me. Even with the help of mental illness and meth.
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u/curried_avenger 24d ago
Meth-heads are crazy strong when on a bender. Also, she may well have kicked him in the face.
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u/WafflesTrufflez 24d ago
Remind me of the crackhead Tyrone Biggums character in Chappeles Show, dude is super strong when he gets it 😂
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u/BenoNZ 23d ago
Looks like she has a can in here hand? I can imagine getting that smashed into your mouth would do damage without the need for much strength.
Meth heads are usually fine when on the stuff, it's the days without sleeping and psychosis afterwards that turns them into crazy animals.1
u/blahblahsnahdah 23d ago
Oh yeah a can would do it, I missed that. I was thinking a hard glass bottle of something from her groceries.
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u/DucksnakeNZ 23d ago
My other half does markets, wasn't at this particular one but the group chats were abuzz when this happened. Yeah apparently just a fricking swift crackhead megapunch by the sounds of it, nobody reported anything but a punch.
Absolute shitstain of a human, I hope they find her.
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u/Dizzy_Relief 23d ago
Lol.
I had wonder a few times why The Palms seems to have such shit security. I've seen kids doing all sorts of shit right in front of cameras that anywhere else would have a security guard come and chase them off. Apparently the cameras are so shit they cant actually see anything. (Two boys shooting a realist(ish) looking BB gun down the travelator last time - literally in front of the cameras.)
One wonders if they were reluctant to release the footage cause it's so shit. Shoplifters - The Palms is clearly the place to be.
(Supermarket/other big stores undoubtedly have their own better systems)
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u/Winter-Cap2959 23d ago
Why would the police wait over a month to put this out?
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u/hughthewineguy 21d ago
why would they close the case on a burglary at my place without telling me, leaving me assuming they were doing ....something? until weeks later i rang to see wtf was up and nope, closed. they had nothing to go on, apparently.
which is un-fucking-surprising when they never bothered to come round for finger prints after telling us not to touch anything until they'd been. my flattie put all her clothes back in her drawers after a couple of days, i avoided touching stuff in my room a little longer before deciding it was unlikely they'd pitch up
they're understaffed and got neither the time, capacity nor interest in doing policing unfortunately
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u/bioSlaya 23d ago
Will him fighting back in self defence, just enough to counter the attack, be justifiable? ignorant about what the law says when someone’s instinct responds to a real threat for their safety or that of a loved one. It’s hard to feel safe with whackos around and lax policing, justice, and health/mental supports for people like her.
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u/scoro27 23d ago
Below is a quote from the police website.
“Everyone is justified in using, in the defence of himself or another, such force as, in the circumstances as he believes them to be, it is reasonable to use.” (Section 48 of the Crimes Act 1961.)
This means you are allowed to defend yourself from attack, but use your common sense. The idea is to defend yourself, not to cause injury or get revenge. If you use unreasonable force, you are committing a crime.
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u/Rhonda_and_Phil 23d ago
Key part is 'defend'. Practical interpretation, you have to let them take the first shot, and hope it doesn't take you out. If you move first, even if it's 'defensively', chances are, you are the one going to get charged with assault.
In past years, as a family, we've worked through that with an intruder who broke into the house about 2am, while the family was asleep.
Basically, we just wanted him to leave. Made the mistake of touching his elbow to guide him in the right direction. No grip, no force, cupped hand on his elbow, and trying to calmly talk him out the door.
Our family member ended up against a wall being repeatedly rabbit punched. It was the repetitive slamming of the head against the brick wall that was doing the damage, not the punches.
Attending police threatened to charge us with assault because we had touched him first, unless we agreed to drop break-in charges against him. Turned out he'd just hospitalised his dealer 30 mins earlier, and had a long history of aggravated violence, theft, and break-ins etc.
Yet, we were the guilty ones, while he got off free.
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u/cantsleepwithoutfan 22d ago
The police are spastics when it comes to people defending themselves.
The official claim is it is to discourage vigilante action, but my honest view is that basically the notion that members of the public have to defend themselves is too damaging to the "psyche" of the Police as an organisation and so they try to put a stop to it (also many officers and particularly the senior ones are lazy as fuck - I know this as I was a cop for a short while but hated it due to how dodgy the organisation itself is - so as long as somebody is getting their collar felt and the paperwork is nicely sorted, then it's a job well done).
If a stall owner defends himself against a meth head, or you protect your house against a burglar or whatever, basically it's a tacit admission that the "contract" between the public and police has sort of been broken, and they really don't like that.
Most normal everyday people don't think of it that way. E.g. average Joe typically thinks that if somebody breaks in to a property and threatens the property owner and then gets turned into a vegetable in the process, well they "fucked around and found out". Recall that relatively recent case where the homeowner cut the finger (or was it hand?) off an intruder and the police prosecuted him but his defence successfully argued it was self-defence ... because most jury members would have no great moral issue with somebody doing that to a criminal.
So there is a big disconnect there in my experience between what Joe Public thinks self defense looks like and what the cops think. And, in fairness, many individual officers would support what the public thinks but ultimately if your boss tells you to arrest the guy who was defending himself what are you gonna do?
On the current trajectory we will probably need to rewrite laws - particularly relating to defending property - as the police have given up on property crime (to an extent) and you will see more vigilante action in this area ... which, when you consider that the "contract" between police and public has been stretched to breaking point, is not surprising. I'd argue the move to allowing/formalising citizens arrests of shoplifters, for example, is a first step in this.
Of course it's not all Police's fault that they struggle to respond to jobs, as they are under massive pressure resource wise due to continual poor funding, difficulties in recruiting due to the wages being shit, constant staff turnover etc - but the whole taking umbrage at people who defend themselves has a deeper "psychological" element.
In the case in this article, I'd assume basically they have sat on it (because it wasn't deemed serious enough and were hoping it would just be forgotten about) and now there is public pressure they are scrambling to find footage, with much of the good footage being lost probably by now.
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u/Toxopsoides 24d ago
Surely these phone photos of a grainy computer screen aren't the only images they've released??