Manawatu Area Commander Inspector Ross Grantham has praised the community for helping a lone police officer confronted on the job. Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
Police have praised the Feilding community after the public helped an officer dodge a "potentially dangerous situation" when she was confronted on the job.
The officer was called to Lethbridge Street shortly after 2pm following reports of a group of people fighting.
Manawatu Area Commander Inspector Ross Grantham said when the officer came across the altercation she was able to de-escalate the situation between two women.
He said as she was speaking with the pair, a man appeared and approached aggressively.
"He's just come up and confronted the police officer while she was trying to deal with the other two that were fighting," Grantham said.
"As you can imagine when a third person gets involved you just want to take a little more caution. He's done nothing more than be verbally aggressive towards the officer."
Grantham praised the public for being able to help the officer while keeping themselves safe by not getting involved.
"One person was filming the incident and when they were told to stop filming by the aggressors, this person simply replied 'I'm not filming you, I'm filming for the police officer', and so that was awesome to see the public responding to help my officer out.
"And also other members of the public have got on to their phones and rung 111," Grantham said.
Back up arrived within 10 minutes of police being notified about the officer being aggressively confronted.
Grantham said he found out about the incident on Sunday and had a good debrief with her about what happened.
"She's comfortable with what she's done and how she was feeling about it afterwards because obviously afterwards is the time that it affects you the most but she was doing really well," Grantham said.
He said he's content with how the situation was resolved.
"She works by herself, as a road policing officer that's not unusual.
"We deploy our staff based on risk assessment and on occasions they do head out alone...
"Our communication centres have good situational awareness and do regular check-ins with our staff who are working alone, so I'm comfortable with how we're operating," Grantham said.
A 35-year-old woman and an 18-year-old woman were arrested and charged with assault.
They were scheduled to appear in the Palmerston North District Court on Thursday.
An 18-year-old man was also charged with driving while disqualified. The vehicle he was driving was seized and impounded.
He was expected to appear in court on 24 April.
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