Firearms case leaves legal minefield, say farmers

A judge's decision to discharge Northland farmer Paul McIntyre on a firearms charge is "sensible and pragmatic", Federated Farmers of New Zealand vice-president Charlie Pedersen says.

But Mr Pedersen said the case highlighted the threat farmers face due to the distance of many rural properties from emergency services, and the legal minefield involved in reluctantly taking the initiative to protect their families and property.

Mr McIntyre, 47, of Whangae, southwest of the Bay of Islands, who caught three men stealing his quad bike in 2002, was acquitted in Kaikohe District Court of discharging a firearm in a manner likely to endanger the safety of others. Judge Michael Lance directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.

The charge -- denied by McIntyre -- arose after he caught Sam Hati and cousins Ned and Ray Brown stealing his bike on his isolated farm late on October 20, 2002. The three men later pleaded guilty to stealing the bike.

Last October, after a five-day trial, McIntyre was acquitted of shooting and injuring Hati with reckless disregard for the safety of others. But the jury could not reach a verdict on the lesser alternative charge, and this week's retrial was ordered.

Today, Mr Pedersen said rural people were more vulnerable to crimes involving guns, and were more often left to rely on their own resources to respond to criminal activity.

He said the Government needed to take a serious look at rural police resourcing, because with limited resources the police could not be expected to do the impossible.

The McIntyre case and other high-profile examples sparked a Federated Farmers' survey which found nearly two-thirds of respondents doubted the ability of 111 call centres to generate an adequate response to a rural emergency.

"Federated Farmers has been pushing for the police to adopt a rural strategy which recognises and acts on the obvious differences between rural and urban crime, and the available responses to those crimes," Mr Pedersen said.

"A lot of the crime carried out in rural areas -- such as stock theft, dope growing, and trespassing by hunters -- involves guns," he said .

"The police should have a strategy for dealing with these differences."

Mr McIntyre was supported in his court cases by a rival rural lobby, Northland Federated Farmers, which gathered over $50,000 to fund his legal costs in the two trials.

Northland Federated Farmers president Ian Walker said that whether or not landowners could now shoot intruders without being prosecuted would come down to circumstances.

"It does send a clear message to the criminal element, that if they're entering a property in the dead of night, that this sort of thing can occur."

- NZPA