Sex shop thief, Father of 7 high on meth and what taking organised crime seriously would require – why nothing National have suggested will solve this
Here’s a story…
Lingerie thief drives car into adult store’s manager in attempt at getaway
A shoplifter who deliberately drove into the manager of adult store Peaches & Cream has been handed her just desserts in court.
Hamilton woman Kayla Jean Smith, 29, appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Friday, on charges of assault using a blunt instrument – namely a blue Toyota Corolla – shoplifting, and aggravated assault.
Some of those charges arose from an incident at the store on Anglesea St, just after 3pm on April 19 last year.
Smith entered the shop and collected five items of lingerie off the shelf, to the value of $320.
With the skimpy clothing in hand, she skimped on paying – instead running out of the store and onto the street with the store manager hot on her tail.
Smith ran to her car, which was parked in a driveway by the store, and got in. The manager saw her, and started walking towards her. Smith stopped the car three metres in front of her.
The manager yelled for her to give the lingerie back. Smith yelled back: “Get f…ed”.
Then she hit the accelerator, hitting the manager with the front of the car. The victim was forced up onto the bonnet of the vehicle and carried along for a couple of metres before being thrown backwards onto the road.
The manager suffered a concussion and bruises and scratches, but was otherwise unharmed.
Smith, meanwhile, had an explanation for the police when they caught up with her: “It was not me. I am being mistaken for a woman called Olivia”.
…she wouldn’t even own up to her own appalling behaviour and pretended ‘Olivia’ was to blame.
What a little charmer!
And why was she running over sex shop managers and stealing lingerie?
Because of the meth.
Of course.
Here’s another wee gem on my Bus route no less…
Auckland bus attack: Justin Waipouri jailed for unprovoked stabbing of fellow passenger in Newmarket
Methamphetamine addict Justin Coy Waipouri had not slept in three days when he turned to a stranger seated near him on an Auckland bus and began to stab him without warning.
Now the 46-year-old has been sentenced in the Auckland District Court for the brutal and unprovoked attack, which he acknowledges was “foolish” and something he regrets.
“What happened on that bus was unacceptable,” Judge Peter Winter said before ordering a sentence of three years’ imprisonment, adding that commuters should be entitled to take public transit without the fear of random violence.
The attack occurred just before 9.30pm one Thursday in May 2022 as the Auckland Transport bus travelled along Broadway in Newmarket. Waipouri and the victim were both on the rear seat of the bus, with another passenger between them.
“As the bus neared the intersection of Remuera Rd and Broadway, Mr Waipouri began behaving erratically, punching the ceiling and complaining of the air conditioning,” the agreed summary of facts for the case states. “[The victim] intervened by telling Mr Waipouri to relax and calm down.
“This enraged Mr Waipouri …”
The defendant then lunged at the victim, throwing punches.
“Using a knife or similar bladed item, Mr Waipouri stabbed [the stranger] four times, thrice in the torso and one in the neck,” court documents state.
The defendant later said he had been up for several days due to methamphetamine use and wasn’t thinking clearly. He had got it in his mind that the stranger was about to attack him so he struck first, he explained.
Waipouri got off the bus after the attack and tried to flag down another bus. When the bus driver refused to open the door for him, Waipouri struck the bus, smashing the glass. For that incident, he was charged with intentional damage.
Waipouri pleaded guilty to both charges last June and had been awaiting sentencing since.
In a victim impact statement written two weeks after the incident, the man who was stabbed said he still hadn’t returned to work as a result of his serious but not life-threatening injuries.
“I don’t know why the male attacked me,” the victim wrote. “I was just trying to help him and calm him down.”
He said he was fearful that Waipouri might be granted bail since the victim would soon have to start using the bus again to get to work.
“I’m afraid something like this might happen again,” he said.
Waipouri was granted electronically monitored bail in April last year so he could enrol at Grace Foundation, a live-in rehabilitation facility. But he absconded from the facility in September and was at-large for six months before being arrested again in March this year. He had been in custody since then.
…wait for the twist…
The father-of-seven has genuine remorse for what occurred and wants to start fresh after release from prison, perhaps using his carpentry qualifications to earn a living, the court was told. He also wanted re-establish a relationship with his children.
…HE’S A FUCKING FATHER OF 7???
What a way to bury the lead!
I don’t want to sound judgy, but if you are stealing lingerie and running over store managers for Meth money, if you are a father of 7 on a 3 days meth bender playing stabby stabby games with fellow bus passengers, may I humbly suggest you are fucked.
Justin and Kayla’s life has been ravaged by Meth, they are making decisions based on the desperation of an addict. The complexity of their lives will not be solved by any of the law and order announcements the Government made last week.
A watered down 3 strikes law, removing the Treaty from Corrections, removing Section 7aa from Oranga Tamariki, military boot camps, warrantless arrests for 14 year olds, a new classification of youth offender, more police foot patrols and banning patches won’t do a fucking thing for the lives of Justin or Kayla because none of those listed things help Justin or Kayla heal from their addiction!
THIS is why we need to legalise and regulate cannabis.
I appreciate I took a sudden Left there, but stick with me.
Meth is a highly addictive drug that gives a sense of euphoria many never find in their own lives. Becoming enslaved to that and damaged by it with no off roads other than prison is a failure in social policy of immense scale.
The only way we can blunt the horrifying and mutilating influence of heavy organised crime with links to South American Cartels is by curing the illness of addiction, it’s not by throwing users into prison.
Keep the terrible system of punishment for commercial dealing in place but allow users to get properly funded rehabilitation programs.
And that’s the crunch.
Properly funded meth rehabilitation programs that are 6 months long with full wrap around services on facilities specially built for them!
Where will we find the money for that?
Hold on, wasn’t there a place where we could find that money?
That’s right, a legal market for cannabis!
Election 2020: Legalising weed could see $675m a year spent on health interventions – report
A legal cannabis market for recreational use could generate $675 million a year for the Government to spend on reducing cannabis-related harm, new economic modelling shows.
It finds the ethical structure of the proposed legislative structure will channel $675million ring fenced each year into drug rehabilitation programs!
$675million!
We currently spend around $150million annually on alcohol rehabilitation – THIS $675million would fund rehab not only all cannabis addiction, but it would also fund all alcohol addiction AND all drug addictions services including meth!
Regulating the cannabis market would inject more funding into all harm minimisation programs than we have ever had.
This would be a new age of rehabilitation funding, the taxation revenue is just beyond anything NZ has ever experienced in the field of drug rehabilitation.
But it gets better.
On top of that $675million in rehabilitation programs that could fund ALL drug addiction, there is almost quarter of a billion to the State in GST, plus 5000 new full time jobs plus creating over $200million in salaries and wages plus saving millions in the judiciary and tens of millions more in the prison system!
This is how far out of whack we have allowed the moralists and prohibitionists to succeed in this country!
The alternative to the current prohibition is so good that the status quo is utterly reprehensible!
If you are still against legal Cannabis after reading this report, then YOU are the fucking problem, not the stoners!
We should be collectively outraged that we have allowed the State to have this prohibition power for as long as they have. Cannabis is a civil rights issue, the State has crushed hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens for decades upon decades to enforce a law that was always about control and not our welfare.
How dare they and how dare we allow them to get away with it!
Legal cannabis market could fund all the meth rehabilitation programs we could ever need while providing desperately needed jobs and desperately needed public taxation while removing power from organised crime.
The medicinal cannabis market is a joke, we demand a legal market so that we can generate desperately needed jobs, taxation revenue, social justice and rehabilitation funding streams!
Taking organised crime seriously would require legalising cannabis so that we could properly fund meth rehab programmes.
You can’t stop the supply of Meth, so tackle the addiction that drives the demand!
Heal our people rather than punish their blighted lives.
Meth and other hard drugs aren’t a reason to legalize cannabis just as any potential tax revenue shouldn’t be the focus – It’s medicine and should be treated as such.
First not for profit grower offering at cost prescriptions wins.
When will the right learn? Prohibition and the war on drugs has failed. Repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different outcome is the definition of madness. If Labour campaign on cannabis law reform in 2026 they will have my vote.
Besides the main holistic qualities of cannabis, I don’t understand why Luxon can’t see there is a viable business model in the cannabis and hemp industries, with 100s of millions in tax he could gather. A smart businessman could see that. Either he is dumb or blinded by his religious beliefs. Or both. Obviously he is not that smart just like his finance minister.
Labour already canned any chance of cannabis legalization. Labour said “NO!”
Problem is, cannabis can lead to trying other things. Way back it was LSD, and sometimes mindless violent activities.
Yeah, cannabis is gateway drug, not like alcohol. Alcohol is A okay & perfectly safe, with zero harm.
Exactly-the gateway drug bollocks again!!
I thought sugary drinks was where everybody starts on the road to drugs and stimulants.
Best declare war on them. Come to think of it, addicts also start out on milk before trying the other stuff, so include milk as well.
Completely agree 100%! And when you legalise cannabis you control distribution and the standard/quality of the cannabis rather than the current situation where the potency of the cannabis is inducing psychosis in some heavy users (possibly laced with other chemicals as well). You also control price, which regulates use (look at cigarettes), and as Martin says, tax income. Win, win, win… but a big lose for the legal industry. This a health issue and should be treated as such.
The regulated cannabis will be dearer because it has to be certified so the cheaper illegal market will still be there.Medical cannabis should be far easier to get than it is at the present. Labour did not fulfill their promises about how it was handled.
And NACT don’t have any promises or ideas at all (past and present governments) except keep it illegal and ‘lock ‘em up’. That will be difficult given a Police force exiting to Australia falling victim to NACTS MO of driving down wages and decimating the public service in the duty of achieving ‘small government’ (= Wild West). Train wreck.
Martyn RIGHT ON POINT AS USUAL.
100% correct on every line in this post.
What a great idea .We will have double the road toll ,more people killed at work and way more stupidity .Kids will be smoking up at school .
What is needed is a real look at all so called drugs like nicotine ,and alcohlo and the damage they are doing in NZ and to our health system .We curtainly dont need another so called legal drug added to the system when in fact we should be moving away from drug use altogether for the betterment of all of NZ .
While I agree with you that we don’t need any recreational drugs the reality that so many people are deceived by alcohol, tobacco, etc means that if there is a market for those products then someone will supply it & a regulated market is slightly better than an unregulated market.
Thanks for being brave enough to write what should be well-known if people were honest with the evidence regarding drug use.
Drug use is not problematic. It is a natural and healthy part of being human. The desire to alter consciousness is as natural and healthy as the desire to eat or have sex. Its not the use of intoxicants that is the problem. It is that some people are prone to addiction due to past trauma that has not been addressed properly with therapy. And that the morons in charge have banned drug use, pushing it underground where there are no age limits, no regulations on dosage or quality controls. Under prohibition, the most vile of drugs (meth) has risen to the top and without access to safer alternatives it will remain there. Really, anyone sensible enough not to smoke weed now because its illegal, is hardly going to smoke 12 cones and go racing around the motorway at full speed just because the law changes. Reality just doesn’t work like that.
Agree with Legalizing weed and using it to fund meth rehab. Thing is, meth is super hard to get off. Only 10 or 20% ever do. We desperately need a safer legal alternative to meth. Weed is not it. We need to either bring back BZP (when it was legal meth use plummeted), or look into other less harmful stimulants such as Ritalin, Coca leaf, Khat or Mormon tea (ephedra leaf). We need to make the PSA workable by removing the need for animal testing and instead allowing overseas studies to evaluate the harm of each substance. Which one is least harmful? Let’s find it, legalize it and tax the f@ck out of it, directing that money to harm reduction and addiction support.
It seems a bit unfair to charge this lady for stealing clothing that probably cost the shop in question about the price of a can of Pringles at the retail price.