Last month, Police lost one of its four-legged own when police dog Gazza was killed in the line of duty during an incident in Porirua when an officer was also injured. When police dogs are injured or killed, the whole country responds. The loss is felt deeply, not only by the dog section, but also the Police Dog Trust, which helps fund the breeding and training of our heroic police dogs. Heather McDonald reports on the trust’s vision for the future.

I have written about gangs and organised crime a few times over the years.

Achieving cross-party political consensus is never easy, so the announcement that the Police Minister, the Labour police spokesperson Stuart Nash and the Greens agree that we need the inquiry the Association has been calling for, into the proliferation of firearms in the hands of criminals, was significant.

Watching American elections, especially the primaries, is as interesting as anything else occurring around the globe currently.

In the late 1980s, I hitchhiked around South Africa just as apartheid was coming to an end.