Pakeha police gunmen botched their politically correct attempts at speaking Maori during the terror raids in Ruatoki.
A teenage girl said police clad in black uniforms wielding rifles stormed into a home on Monday morning then spoke in a broken form of Maori. "I had to say, 'Speakin English, I can't understand you'," the girl told the Herald yesterday.
She said it seemed the officers were using a prepared statement that outlined why they were searching the house "but they couldn't say it right - they hadn't bothered to learn it properly".
The girl, who was not charged with anything, did not want her name used in case police cracked down further on her immediate friends and relatives.
She said she wished she had more courage at the time to tell the police officers she was offended. She now had a message for them: "If you are going to raid people, do it in your own language."
An elder, who sat in on the Herald's interview, said the police's poor use of te reo had only added to the confusion for the girl and her young relatives, who speak Maori as a first language but have equally good English.
The girl had not heard of the police's public offer of counselling but said she would not take it up.
Police have been heavily criticised by Ruatoki residents because the raids targeted the entire community rather than just those with involvement in the alleged paramilitary group.
The police cordon was symbolically set up besides the "confiscation line", up to which the Crown took land from the Tuhoe tribe in the 1860s.
A roadblock stopped people from going to work, mirrors were used to search beneath cars and police examined under bonnets. People were stopped and had to stand in front of their car and hold a number while police photographed them.
The Herald has been told the officers were ordered to speak in Maori after Prime Minister Helen Clark was briefed about the raids.
A police spokeswoman said there was no policy in place for officers on the raid to speak Maori.
