Intelligence gathering is getting harder

Is it just me or are our criminals getting thicker. Many of us have chucked scorn at the cops for years because most of us only see the slow witted, slow talking, ‘Mr Plod’ types who seem to struggle so much issuing a literate statement to media you wonder how the hell they could ever solve a mystery.

However lately it has come to my attention that an awful lot of the criminally inclined among our population are racing like hell to take the title of the thickest group of people in New Zealand from our dullards in blue.

Two examples of some of this latest batch of fumbling felons arose in the Far North this week and these two Northlanders were a long way north of sensible.

The first of those who is aptly named after the allegedly first ever man – (who by all accounts wasn’t all that smart either) is Adam Saville of Mangawhai. Adam had a really good idea about stealing a pair of Nike shoes from Rebel Sports in the Okara Shopping Centre. He was spotted by store staff trying to stuff them down his trousers (was he trying to impress the girls?). When he realised he had been tumbled, he took to his heels (presumably with the Nikes still in a position to bruise his tender parts).

Unfortunately Adam wasn’t that fleet of foot (maybe he should have put the Nikes on his feet instead of his old feller) and was soon caught by some civic-minded bystanders. They brought Adam back to the store to face the music, but Adam wasn’t yet singing from the same song sheet and decided to opt for adding a bit of percussion. He did this somewhat unwittingly as only the witless can, by attempting to flee his captors. However in his haste he forgot that it’s a better idea to look where you are going rather than where you have come from. As a result he ran headlong into a head-high horizontal bar that was holding up a street sign and took an enforced nap on the pavement where he was duly scooped up and arrested. I’ll bet he really reckons those $130 shoes were worth a smack on the head and a criminal record. Imagine if he’d got away with them; he’d never want for anything again (except perhaps a brain cell).

The second Northerner to display his cretinous credentials has not been named at this stage (presumably to spare the embarrassment of anyone who had anything to do with his birth.

Mr Anonymous or Mr Big (Plonker) as we shall call him came up with a brilliant plan to steal a packet of batteries from Pak ‘N’ Save. Unfortunately we can’t cost this one out so we don’t know if this is a three or four figure crime (including cents).

Anyway Mr Big had not quite mastered the magicians’ art of palming his booty and was spotted by store staff, and took off. He should have inserted the batteries first, because that might have made him a little brighter and more likely to avoid capture. Unfortunately he didn’t have the time or the wit to do this and instead simply ran down the street followed by store staff. A passing policeman saw the commotion and was able to easily intercept and arrest him. The policeman found it really easy to track the thief because he was wearing a bright yellow High-Vis vest, which we have to conclude, was the only bright thing about this person.

In an update form an earlier blog at this site entitled You’d better give the suckers an even chance I see former Hastings barrister Sacha Beacham has been in trouble again. Ms Beacham would appear to be in good company with Messrs Saville and Anonymous above as she hasn’t quite got the message that she needs to stop drinking or at least stop misbehaving when she does. Last year the boozing barrister was fined and disqualified from driving for her third drink driving conviction. At the time she managed to get the trial moved to Auckland to save her blushes in her hometown. Following the court’s generous indulgence Ms Beacham didn’t bother to turn up for her hearing because she heard a media had applied for permission to take pictures of her.

Well this time Ms Beacham faced the court over a charge of obstructing police and resisting arrest. I hardly need add the demon drink was involved again and it would seem she has learned very little since her last court experience as this offence took place on New Year’s Eve, some four months after her previous conviction. I notice Ms Beacham who is reported to have relocated to Auckland was this time tried in Napier (presumably for the same reasons she was tried in Auckland last time).  This time she turned up, however and unsuccessfully tried to oppose the press application to take photographs. I do hope Ms Beacham gets herself into a programme to deal with the obvious problem she has with alcohol before she kills someone. Most sane people would not go out and get bladdered and arrested when they have as much to lose as she does. You have to wonder how good she is as a barrister based on her own decisions.

Another criminal whose brains seem to be AWOL is former director of National Finance Anthony Banbrook. Mr Banbrook has just pleaded guilty in the High Court at Auckland to a charge of signing a company document which included untrue statements. His sentencing on the charge which carries potential penalties of up to five years in the slammer or fines of up to $300,000 is scheduled for August.

When asked to surrender his passport prior to his sentencing the former financial genius asked the judge if he could take his pre-booked holiday in Fiji first.

Thankfully Justice Mark Woolford was having none of it. Neither was Crown Prosecutor Steve Symon who pointed out that Banbrook had booked the holiday for the time the trial was to have been conducted. The only reason Banbrook was ‘free’ to take it was because of his guilty plea which meant the trial finished early.

So to recap; this financial genius pre-booked a holiday to Fiji for a time when it would be obvious to any but the eternally he would not be able to go if he pleaded not guilty and even less likely if he pleaded guilty. No wonder the company collapsed.

However just to demonstrate how equally dopey our legislators can be, I point to the Vehicle Confiscation & Seizure Bill. I think whoever came up with this idea must have been having a seizure at the time.

This week the first boy-racer (I prefer the term idiot-boy) car was crushed by Police Minister Anne ‘Tosser” Tolley. This one belonged to Daniel Briant who had reached the requisite three strikes for his idiotic behaviour in front of an off-duty police officer in Porirua. (there’s help in your town, Daniel). Less than three hours after being sentenced by the Court he was behind the wheel again doing exactly the same stuff, this time proving what a hopeless wannabe driver he was by crashing into a fence which wasn’t probably nowhere near as thick as him.

This bright young spark then set about trying to hide his car by a series of registration changes, but eventually the law caught up with him and the car was uplifted and made into a metallic poppadom.

But the point here is the legislation that empowers the state to wantonly vandalise an otherwise perfectly good car in order to ‘teach’ Daniel a lesson didn’t seem to stop him repeating his idiocy even after the order was made to seize his car.

For the law to work it has to appear reasonable to the ordinary man in the street and if young people in particular are to learn from it, there must be no stupid inconsistencies such as this. Simply seizing the car and selling it would deprive him of his wheels just as surely as this act of vandalism would. But then like so many laws enacted as a knee-jerk reaction, it’s all just window dressing; it looks pretty but it only creates an image and changes nothing.

Who’s afraid of the big bad truth?

I sometimes wonder who that stranger is in front of me at the checkout counter. Is he/she a child abuser? A rapist? A thief? A drunk driver? A conman, a vicious thug or a bungling idiot?

The trouble is that we don’t know and the authorities, in an effort to allegedly ‘protect the innocent’ are hanging out the rest of us like fresh meat in the jungle.

The judges who think they know what is best for us and the politicians who ‘know’ they know best are determined that we should not know who to be wary of or who to run a mile from. Never mind that many more of us will fall prey to the criminal tendencies and the reckless actions of people who are being protected by what is essentially a crock of shit.

We can’t know the names of the two pieces of flotsam that locked their 9 year old daughter in a cupboard, and tortured her and beat her in what amounts to one of the most heinous and sickly perverted examples of child abuse you could think of. The excuse we are given by the judge is that if we were to know it would then lead us to identification of the victims.

There are several things wrong with this approach. While it is true the naming of the parents would ipso facto lead to the identification of the kids, it is first important to remember these kids will already be known to close relatives and anyone else who rocked up to the court. So in a way the cat is already out of the bag, but what worries me more is how these orders bind everyone concerned. In real terms one presumes the victims are also bound by such an order. If they weren’t there wouldn’t be much point in granting it would there? Because this effectively means these kids have to walk around with this terrible secret locked inside them and are only ever able to discuss it with counsellors. I can’t help but feel having to keep shtumm about such things is probably far more harmful in the long run. Covering the thing up sends a message to the kid that this is somehow shameful (for them) when in reality they have nothing to be ashamed of. They need to know that victims should never take on the shame that belongs fairly and squarely upon the shoulders of the offenders.

It is also unfair that the community is not going to know when these people are released back into their midst. This is possibly not so important in this case but it certainly is important in cases involving paedophiles, thugs, or others who perpetrate crimes upon the general population.

And regarding the bungling idiots I referred to at the beginning of this blog, there are few more adept at this type of behaviour than our District and High Court judges. I think they should be made to wear some kind of identification when out in public (do they ever go out in public?). Something understated like a dunce’s hat would suffice.

You might think that a tad harsh, but it is an almost daily event to be gobsmacked by the latest judicial fuck-up hitting the headlines. I’m not just talking about minor errors either. One that has recently slipped by with hardly a murmur from anyone is the case of Olinale Ah You who was convicted of killing 80-year-old Manurewa woman Yan Ping Yang who he beat to a bloody pulp in her own home. He has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 18 years. But this guy is really nasty; two weeks after attacking Mrs Yang he, went out and attacked another woman. This scumbag has convictions for violent behaviour going back to 1998 and was jailed for 12 years with a minimum parole period of eight in May 2009 on another matter. As the Yang killing took place in 2008, I can only conclude the 2009 sentence was for the later offence. However I was more alarmed to read why Ay You is only just getting sentenced for the killing.

It would seem that when he was first convicted he was given life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 20 years, but the jury was told of his previous convictions before finding him guilty. Who told them is unknown but the judge in the case was Edwin Wylie and as this is basically judicial systems 101 you would have to wonder why he was not sacked on the spot. If someone let that particular cat out of the bag in court his duty was to dismiss the jury and order a retrial BEFORE sentencing. Instead of which this clown went ahead and sentenced Ah You whereupon his lawyer (quite naturally) went to the Court of Appeal to have the conviction quashed which they did.

No doubt all of this cost a great deal of money and no doubt we the taxpayer paid for both sides of the fight and now Ah You’s sentence has been cut by two years into the bargain.

I have since learned the reasons for the retrial were suppressed. I honestly don’t know if they still are, but since the information was still available in one report on the NZ Herald site recently I am assuming the suppression has lapsed. In any event it is not the sort of thing we should be prevented from knowing. This bloody judge is getting paid by us and he ought to be accountable for his performance and we have a right to know when he costs us tens of thousands of dollars through his poor case management.