Founder of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, Garth Neil McVicar has talked to 1 NEWS to clarify a controversial Facebook post he made about the man fatally shot by Police on State Highway 1 yesterday where he wrote "one less to clog the prisons" .
The post was made as an East Auckland man, 29, was fatally shot by police yesterday on SH1 near Pohuehue, north of Auckland, after approaching officers with a machete, say police.
Mr McVicar's Facebook caption read, "One less to clog the prisons! Congratulations to the New Zealand Police, our thoughts are with the officer who was forced to take this action to protect the public."
The post has gained mixed reviews from users including one comment saying, "Oh well he wont do that again will he."
Another read, "I am a policeman here in NZ. The NZ Police are not big game hunters, shooting a human being is never a time to congratulate anybody..Your congratulations are entirely unwelcome and repugnant, and I doubt you'd find a single police officer in NZ who would accept them."
One more user commented, "My thoughts go out to the police officer's who saved the hard working taxpayer thousands of $."
Mr McVicar said to 1NEW's, "I feel very sorry for his family, but that's another issue again he made a conscious decision a couple of times to take a machete to the Police.
"The cops did what they had to do, my heart goes out to the Police officer who had to pull the trigger."
Mr McVicar says as an organisation the Sensible Sentencing Trust are supporting victims of crime and are dealing with the most hideous, tremendous issues that this country has.
His message relates to the statistics that show the typical inmate today has 46 prior convictions.
"We have a Government talking about reducing the prison population, they're not talking about reducing the crime rates.
"Why do we have guys prepared to take machetes to the Police? Why do we have such high levels of those crimes?" he said.
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