A man allegedly moved between the windows of an Auckland house to keep a laser pointed at the police helicopter as it flew over Mount Eden early this morning, police say.<\/p>\n
Eagle had been flying above the suburb at about 2.50am when the crew noticed the light directed at the aircraft.<\/p>\n
Acting Senior Sergeant Christian Iogha said the laser had lasted several seconds at a time, with one incident lasting almost 30 seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers quickly spotted a man shining the light and moving around the house to use different windows as the aircraft was moving,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Flight tracking data showed the helicopter making several loops over Sandringham, Mount Roskill and Three Kings around the time of the incident.<\/p>\n
Iogha said the helicopter\u2019s on-board technology identified the property, and police took a man into custody without incident.<\/p>\n
A 28-year-old man has been charged with interfering with an aircraft under the Civil Aviation Act 2023.<\/p>\n
He is due to appear in the Auckland District Court next Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Police helicopter crew is out there working hard for the protection and safety of our community, and this type of behaviour puts everyone at risk,\u201d Iogha said.<\/p>\n
According to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), laser strikes can leave pilots with momentary flash blindness, with after-images lingering in their vision once the beam has moved away. The effects can sometimes take days to pass.<\/p>\n
The CAA said high-powered laser pointers can dazzle pilots from several kilometres away and the most severe cases can cause prolonged eye injury.<\/p>\n
Laser strikes on aircraft, particularly at night, have been trending upwards since portable laser pointers became freely available, the authority said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man allegedly moved between the windows of an Auckland house to keep a laser pointed at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,67,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-636239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-auckland","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}