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Police say a stun gun found during a routine stop in Hamilton was brought into the country illegally and was the second weapon of its type discovered by police over the past month.
Hamilton police spokesman Andrew McAlley said the Auckland man who was found with a stun
gun in his car told police he needed it because "bad things happened in south Auckland".
The 35-year-old man was pulled over by Hamilton police on Saturday night, when he failed to stop at a stop sign.
Police found a projector which had been stolen from Aberdeen School on August 27 in the car and took the man back to Hamilton's central police station.
A thorough search of his car revealed the "Steetwise 900K Volt" stun gun in a pocket of the driver's side door, leaving police "shocked", he said.
The man lives in Queen St in Auckland city.
Mr McAlley said stun guns were not legal imports and would have to have been brought into the country illegally.
"Stun guns, along with Tasers, are restricted weapons and other than for law enforcement, possession of them is prohibited."
The stun gun was similar to the cattle prods used at the freezing works and while they did not fire out electrodes they were still extremely painful, he said.
Heart complications were among the health issues involved if the stun gun was used, he said.
The stun gun was the second of this type recovered by police this month, the first was seized during a search of a large scale cannabis cultivation operation in downtown Hamilton, he said.
While police were concerned about criminals arming themselves with any type of weapon it was a far bigger priority to recover the more than 100 restricted weapons from the collection of a Hot Water Beach (Coromandel) gun collector, he said.
"Those automatic and semi-automatic machine-guns, assault rifles and pistols sought under Operation Might remain a grave area of concern for not just Waikato police but staff across the country."
The weapons were stolen on July 28.
The man found carrying the stun gun was one of nine people arrested on Saturday night for an array of burglaries.
As well as the stun gun police recovered a stolen vehicle and one person was arrested for receiving in separate incidents.
Three men were arrested when their car was pulled over and seven grams of methamphetamine and $1010 in cash was recovered.
Information from that incident led police to arrest another man, just as he was about to sit down and enjoy a BBQ dinner.
The 18-year-old was wanted on eight warrants to arrest relating mostly to burglary offence.
- NZPA