KEY POINTS:
I am angry. And what makes it all the more painful is that my anger is tinged with abject shame.
I cannot believe that members of the police stood around in what they considered a safe place for nearly 20 minutes while a citizen who had been shot
lay seriously wounded on the floor of his liquor store.
Police received the first 111 emergency call at 9.05pm, the first police unit arrived at 9.12pm but the police did not enter the store until 9.31pm and did not give St John the okay to go in for five more minutes after that, nearly 20 minutes after the paramedics arrived at a "safe point" at the scene.
And this in spite of a 111 operator being told by a family friend, Sandeep Verma - who arrived minutes after the shooting - that the robbers were long gone. There was, Mr Verma said, no excuse for not letting help in sooner. The shot man's wife, his business partner and a close friend were in the shop with him, but officers would still not go in.
Another friend of Navtej Singh, the 30-year-old who died later in Middlemore Hospital, accused the police who attended the Manurewa shooting of not being human.
"This is not acceptable," he said. "Everyone was calling cops and an ambulance from the carpark so that means no one is around.
"If you are still waiting for police, that means they are just abiding by the rules. They are not human beings. They just follow the rules which are on the books, that's it."
He understates the case. I consider the behaviour of the officers cowardly and seriously in dereliction of their duty.
Had Mr Singh received prompt attention from the St John paramedics who arrived at the scene shortly after the first police and were held back, he might well be alive today.
Instead, a young woman is left a widow and three little girls are left fatherless.
These were officers who swore to uphold the law and to protect and defend the lives and property of the citizens of this nation.
That's what the police are for. Their job is to stand between us and those who would do us harm in the same way that a nation's armed forces stand between us and anyone who threatens our safety and security.
And heaven knows our history is littered with examples of police officers courageously putting themselves in harm's way to protect, defend or rescue citizens who find themselves in trouble. Some have paid with their lives.
Detective Inspector Jim Gallagher said police had to establish the gunman's whereabouts to ensure no one else's life was in danger and had to wait for firearms to arrive so armed police could check the scene before letting anyone into the store.
He maintained that the police did their best given they had to "follow procedures".
Well all I can say is that their best is not nearly good enough and there is something seriously wrong with the "procedures".
Which is not surprising considering the transformation during the term of the Labour-led Government of the police force from a paramilitary organisation into just another state bureaucracy.
Who wrote the "procedures"? Was it an experienced policeman with frontline experiences or was it some civilian paper-shuffler, hundreds of whom infest police headquarters and stations round the country?
Long-serving police officers tell me that one of the main reasons the blue line is so thin, and getting thinner, is that frontline police, who should be out and about, are buried in police stations under piles of paperwork.
One irony of this disgraceful situation is that the local MP is George Hawkins, who in his six years as Minister of Police presided over the disintegration of the force and the appointment of commissioners who were not up to the job.
Public respect for the police has been declining for years, probably since a National Government decided to merge police and the Ministry of Transport's traffic enforcement division back in 1992, ending a separation of powers that was unique to the Western world.
But, in the term of this Labour-led Government, public respect for the police has plummeted in the face of criminal misbehaviour, and blunders, by officers.
But none of those comes close to the disgrace in Manurewa on Saturday night.
Unless the public is given more acceptable excuses than those offered so far, Commissioner Howard Broad and Acting Commissioner Rob Pope should resign.
In the meantime, they might consider changing the blue and white checks on police caps to a broad band of red tape. And tuck in a white feather just to set it off.
