@antipodean said in Toutai Kefu attacked, in hospital:

@rancid-schnitzel said in Toutai Kefu attacked, in hospital:

@kiwiwomble said in Toutai Kefu attacked, in hospital:

bundle these pricks up and take them down the local rugby club as a tackle bag, there would be a que out the door

If only that were possible. I suspect it will be a slap on the wrist and a solemn promise not to do it again. Thank you civil libertarians. Doesn't matter about the lives scum like this destroy, apparently the most important thing is their rights.

Interesting to read that they were on parole with a curfew.

Speaking from New Zealand perspective - the curfew to a juvie offender is about as useful as a the proverbial on a bull. They often come from homes where there is no respect for rule of law, or parents are out doing the same thing - so they just go out and do it over again. The threshold for having a juvie remanded in custody is incredibly high when it is for volume crime offences (burgs, car thefts etc). I'm hearing from cops here that since the NZ Police announced they won't be pursuing vehicles, the number of juvies stealing cars and doing "adult crimes" such as ram raids and agg robberies has sky rocketed, because they know they're untouchable.

When I was brand new in the CIB, we dealt with a home invasion where a bunch of juvies burgled a house in an upmarket area, were disturbed by the occupants and then beat the shit out of them with sports equipment found at the scene and weapons they had brought with them. They were so arrogant they weren't even wearing gloves or anything - the offenders were ID'd by fingerprints left in blood on the walls of the property. The victims were lucky not to die, but part of me thinks it might have been preferable, given the severity of some of their life-long injuries.

The punishment very rarely comes close to fitting the crime in these sorts of cases when it involves young people. Aside from the physical injuries his family has suffered, they will likely suffer long-term anxiety in regards to their personal safety, the sanctity of their house, and their trusting of strangers. Often that can last long after the physical injuries have healed.

Like everyone else, obviously hoping Kefu and his family pull through this.

@taniwharugby

Yup. In the same way you can't outswim a shark, you can't outrun a land-shark.

It's funny that the whole age thing even comes into play, given the amount of young teenagers or pre-teens who want to commit adult crimes.

I feel I might have already told this story on here but when I was frontline we had a failing to stop along Tamaki Drive late one night with a stolen Toyota Landcruiser that was being used in a series of robberies and various other types of crime around the city. We had the helicopter overhead so as per protocol, they took the lead in the pursuit and we pulled back. The offenders ditched the car in a street in a swanky street in St Heliers and split up in different directions. The car was overloaded with about 6 or 7 people so the helicopter was directing cops to the locations of the offenders, spread across 4 or 5 properties in the street.

I got directed to go and grab someone who was hiding down the side of the house. I'd left my torch in the car in my haste to get out. When the guys in eagle suddenly said my offender was making a run for it, and was going to directly cross my path down the side of the house, I couldn't see much. We had no idea what we were going into or who we might end up arresting, so I saw the dark figure flash across in front of me and I laid on possibly the best tackle I've ever made in my life. Hard and flush, right up under the rib cage, with my full weight landing on top of them. The sound of all the air escaping their lungs was fairly satisfying to me, given I was full of adrenaline from the chase.

Turns out the offender I tackled was a moderately sized 13 year old girl, who had been in the car, had been involved in all of the robberies, and who had a pocket knife and a screw driver in her pocket.

The point of the story (other than that 13 year olds are suprisingly satisfying to tackle) is that I had no idea of the age or race of the person I was using force on, as the dog handler in the story wouldn't have, and even if I had known their race, it wouldn't have mattered in a fluid situation. Also, 13 year olds are committing adult crimes with greater frequency, and a 13 year old swinging a knife would kill or maim an officer just as well as a 40 year old swinging a knife. It's a shame Marama Fox can't grasp this concept before she opens her mouth and cries racism.

I think the while "a conviction would stop me from pursuing (insert chosen career path here)" thing is a little bit stupid when it comes to serious crime.

Fair play when it's something like disorderly behaviour or something minor and dumb. But when you punch a female cop unconscious and then punch her three more times in the head on the ground while shes unconscious, bad luck. That's a serious crime, and had it been a cop convicted of doing it to him the cop would definitely be going straight to jail.

Just because you have doors open to you that not everyone else does, shouldn't give you a get out of jail free card when it comes to serious offending. I was equally disgusted when George Moala got discharged without conviction for slashing that guys neck with a broken bottle too. With great privilege (such as lucrative career options) Should come great responsibility. The fact his family blamed it on him living away from home at uni is an insult to every other person who has done the same thing and not bashed females after too many beers. That their statement referred to it as a "bad decision" is also an insult. A bad decision would be the first punch, not the three subsequent punches to an unconscious female just doing her job.

While I agree we should look to rehabilitate offenders, there also has to be a punitive element to the justice system. I've seen poor brown kids go to jail for far less than what this clown did. Unfortunately for them their parents didn't have the money to buy a big-shot lawyer to argue every single legal point of the case

@MN5 said in NZ justice system 2.0:

Yeah I read that bolded bit the other day and it made my blood fucken boil. A few of my ex colleagues went all the way and did the "sworn" thing ( ie became cops ). A couple are attractive blonds and I can easily picture them being the targets of all sorts of abuse and also worry that could easily happen to them after all a 50kg female isn't generally gonna fare to well against some pissed up aggressive bloke on Courtney Place.

My wife is about 50kg and worked frontline for a few years and she (thankfully) never had too many problems. Female cops are normally assaulted by other females because most criminals, except the worst or most desperate, still have a little bit of honour that extends to not bashing female cops. Female cops were also good at talking things down and de-escalating situations. I used to end up in way more brawls when I worked with other guys.

Speaking of the honour system, a long story, but I was working frontline in about 2009 and me and a female partner got called to a disorder/trespass job in Panmure. It came in as 2 guys arguing with the bouncers of a pub there because they weren't allowed in. It wasn't the crime of the century and we were in the McDonald's drive thru when it came in because we hadn't eaten all night. So as we went to it I was hurriedly trying to finish a big Mac combo.

When we arrived, it turned out one of the guys had an arrest warrant so he bolted down behind the shops, which are pitch black. I had left my torch in the car and was full of Mcdonalds so i gave up the chase after a few hundred metres and wandered back to see if my partner was okay with the other guy, figuring we'd get a dog to track the fulla I'd lost. As I rounded the corner, I saw the second offender shove/hit my partner and take off. It wasn't a bad assault but she was a bit shocked. I took off after him, thankfully he was kinda fat, and I was kinda gassed plus full of McDonald's so we had a slow motion footchase down Queens Road in Panmure. My partner had called for backup, saying she has been assaulted so suddenly there were a couple of nearby sirens audible which made the guy run down a dead end alleyway to try to get off the main road.

I got in the alleyway and yelled at him to get on the ground and he was under arrest for assaulting police. Just as I slowed to a walk and the offender put his hands up,this big old white guy who had seen the assault on my partner from the comfort of the pub came tearing past me and punched the offender square in the jaw with one of the cleanest punches I've seen landed and screamed "don't ever hit a woman cop" then proceeded to try to go to town on this guy on the ground. I then had to pull him off, and unluckily for him, one of he biggest guys on our squad turned up, and thinking the big white guy was the main offender spear tackled him and put him in cuffs for his troubles.

Hilariously, the first offender I lost was hiding behind a rubbish bin about 6 feet away in the same alley, looking petrified about what had just happened to his mate, came out and lay on the ground without being asked.

I think we ended up having to warn the big white guy for assault, just to cover our asses in court. Bizarrely enough, he had a sizeable criminal history for all sorts of things, but was staunchly pro police and anti violence against women so wasn't gonna let it slide.

@billy-tell said in NZ Politics:

@aucklandwarlord said in NZ Politics:

@billy-tell said in NZ Politics:

Ordinary kiwis can’t get home at the moment but terrorist Sri Lankan nationals are tracked rather than booted out on their arse. Total failure of nz security forces.

I'd suggest total failure of New Zealand justice system as a whole rather than specifically to the NZ Intelligence Community or the Police. Given he was under 24/7 monitoring by surveillance and STG, I'd say the NZ security services were probably doing as much as they could, but obviously they have to play within the laws that we've got.

But I agree with your sentiment and don't get how we don't have escape clauses in our laws to allow us to turf people like this out.

Someone needs to ask the hard Qs. If he needs that much surveillance than WTF was he roaming free. All that surveillance and 6 people attacked. A shameful scandalous episode imo.

Agree re the roaming free thing. Unacceptable we don't have the law to indefinitely imprison people who pose an extreme risk, just as we do with preventative detention for extreme violence or sexual offenders.

Re the surveillance operation versus number of people attacked - from my past professional life I've got a reasonable working knowledge of surveillance operations, and it's not like the surveillance cops can walk next to the person, especially if he's surveillance savvy (as the press conference said he was) and under 24/7 surveillance - there is a need to keep a distance so he isn't seeing the same faces week in, week out.

Bearing in mind a number of factors, that I can see from the information in the press conference:

1. The surveillance cops would have been different to the STG guys carrying the weapons who actually shot the terrorist, (two separate skills sets plus the need to blend in with the general public without carrying bulky weapons), so they would have seen or heard the attack and had to radio the STG guys in.
2. They were in a supermarket which even under covid restrictions would have had a few people in there, so the ability to wound multiple people in a short space of time is right there. The element of surprise and targeting more vulnerable people would mean there wouldn't have been much chance for the victims.
3. The terrorist used a weapon of opportunity from the shelves - as in, he didn't walk into the supermarket holding a hunting knife, he grabbed a weapon off the shelves, so for all intents and purposes, it probably looked like he was doing his daily shop, hence they kept their distance so as not to alert him that he was being surveilled.

I personally (albeit biasedly) think the Police did a pretty good job to limit the damage to six. The Commissioner said they had shot the guy within 60 seconds of the attack beginning - that's a pretty short space of time to react and end a situation, all things considered.

@No-Quarter said in Ngaruawahia P dealer eviction:

If they have such great intel on who and where the P dealers are why would they not work with Police to have them arrested? The argument "oh the cops haven't done anything about it" is crap because getting to the heart of these operations takes a huge amount of effort and investment. If this gang already knows everything and wants something down about it then why not give the info to the Police and make their jobs 1000% easier.
.

That's exactly it. The general public reaction to this (by general public, I mean the cross section of society who care enough to comment on the herald and stuff facebook pages, so not really accurate), is "why aren't the Police doing this instead of the gangs? They're also the same people who will (rightly) complain that the Police are overstepping their mark whenever a court case is thrown out because a warrant is ruled illegal or a search unlawful.

I worked in high end drug enforcement for just over 4 years and it's without a doubt the most difficult, frustrating but rewarding form of policing I ever worked in. It's not as simple as seeing some scrote driving around in a 200k Benz and deciding they're a meth dealer. I was lucky enough that our squad was really well resourced, so when we chose a target, we normally always got there in the end, but for an average frontline cop or Detective in a small provincial centre, they'll be running on a bare-bones budget, have limited drug investigation skills and even less resources. Coupled with the workload of being one of only a couple of Detectives in a small town, the desire for proactive drug enforcement is pretty low. Add into it that drug enforcement doesn't generate "statistics" (such as burglary resolution rates etc), and you'll find that it's almost frowned upon from above.

Hence, it's not even as simple as the cops just deciding they're gonna investigate the guys either, even with someone saying "Joe Bloggs is a drug dealer", it still wouldn't be enough to get you a search warrant, or over the line in court.

I'm fairly neutral on the Tribal Huks (aside from the stupid name). Gang members come in all shapes and sizes, and while they're certainly no angels, but they're probably not the Headhunters or Mongrel mob either, in terms of criminality. It's not unusual for gang members give back to the community by coaching sports, helping the elderly etc, so being part of a gang doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be an evil monster. There are plenty of absolute scumbags who don't wear patches as well.

Pink seems like any number of gang members I've come across in the past with a massive ego, loves the spotlight and likes to talk about what a good guy they are. Personally, if they want to go and bash the shit out of some meth dealers, I'm fairly neutral on that, too. But they can't complain if they wind up being locked up for it. Its a slippery slope when you allow a gang to be judge, jury and executioner, without any due process. If it makes the community feel a little bit safer, so be it. But I would bet the house on the fact that meth addicts in Ngaruawahia are still easily able to get their fix from somewhere close by. You can't save people from themselves, so you'd have to ask if it's actually making Ngaruawahia any safer.

From memory, the victim in that matter was being a bit of a knob, but not violent or aggressive. Just a bit mouthy. I'm not entirely sure it's ever justified punching some guy out just because he's being a bit lippy. Yes, we all think about doing it, but being a thug just because someone is being cheeky is never really on. You also run the risk that you do them serious injury or kill them.

The bit that rankled me in that article is "He partially blamed Asthana's death on late night opening hours, and said he had suffered the loss of his naval career, experience financial hardship, "as well as emotional scarring, guilt, depression and anxiety all as a result of my actions". "

Generally when you go to prison for killing someone you lose your career and therefore experience financial hardship. But at least you're not dead, like the guy you killed is. McFarland looks to be a big boy, and the victim doesn't look very big at all. When you hit someone in the head with that sort of mismatch, you absolutely roll the dice.

It's also a pretty long bow to draw to say that it's the late night opening hours. There were probably 3000 other people out drinking in the CBD that night as well, and very few of them decided to punch someone out over something so minor.

I agree with Godder's sentiments regarding the fine balancing act with liqour enforcement. While it is absolutely necessary in some places, the Ellerslie races is a perfect example of where they have gone overkill. Can't BYO anymore because glammed up girls and guys in suits got too drunk, (but didn't really cause any major trouble). Yet still, the fun police decide they're gonna do something about it, even in the absence of any real violence or disorder (I did lock a guy up there once who was too drunk to notice my car was an unmarked CIB car and kicked it when I honked at him to get off the road, leaving a pretty good dent. But that's another story)

When I was frontline, or worked special events (RWC etc), I was never a fan of locking people up solely for breach of liquor ban etc. I agree that the bans are in place for all the right reasons - not just to stop people taking a heap of cheap piss into town and preloading before going into licenced premises. But also to stop drunk people carrying glass bottles (potential weapons) around town and generally just milling in the street drinking.

In general, they have been quite good for reducing disorder in hotspots. That said, in my past life, I'd had mates locked up for the relatively minor offence of carrying a half empty bottle of lion red from a taxi to the nearest bin outside a nightclub and it's pretty shithouse and not a good look for the cops in the eye of the average citizen. I used to deal with liquor ban breaches either by making people tip it out, leave the area with it (if they had heaps of booze in a car and I didn't want make them waste it) or else my favourite of telling them that I was just gonna go and write in my notebook and if the alcohol was gone by the time I turned back around that they'd be all good, however they disposed of it. I'd then sit in the car and chuckle at a bunch of 18 year olds trying to knock back beers so they wouldn't get poured out. Obviously used in only the right circumstances where the guys weren't already hammered, and weren't causing problems, but always hilarious.

My reasoning was that it was far better enforcement than just being a fluffybunny and locking them up and wasting my time and them ending up with a conviction for something stupidly minor. That said, it was a massive attitude test as well. If they decided they wanted to be a cock, then I enforced the law, because chances were that they were gonna be a cock later on and we'd end up dealing with them then.

Since those times though the balance of enforcement has shifted with liquor ban enforcement and it's now a case of locking people up is only the very last resort, as opposed to where it used to be the first resort, which is absolutely the right move.

At the end of the day, alcohol does a huge amount of social harm, so enforcement is absolutely necessary, but as Godder mentioned, it's quite a balancing act to do it. A huge percentage of frontline lock ups are alcohol related, but it's also unfair to penalise those who can use it responsibly, just because a minority can't.

@mariner4life Thanks mate. Chance meeting with @Donsteppa at work the other day made me realise I hadn't been on here for a very long time.

Incredibly this was the first thread I clicked on in a good two years and it felt like I'd fallen into some weird-ass parallel universe.

Interesting insight into the mind of Ferners.

A few years back Mrs AWL and I were discussing hall passes, and she came up with Bradley Cooper being somewhere near the top of her list.

I told her that my hall pass would be the mousy looking cashier at the local four square who was about ten years older than me and had made flirtatious comments to me in the past while I'd been going about my daily business. Not celebrity caliber of course, but somewhat more attainable than anyone on her list, so a smart tactical move, I thought.

Fair to say, no hall passes were issued on that occasion and the topic hasn't been brought up since.

@gt12 said in Toutai Kefu attacked, in hospital:

@aucklandwarlord

Welcome back mate - fucking depressing post though.

What type of punishments might help? I have no idea, but would a return to forced military service or some of the older punishments would be of help?

Yeah I genuinely don't know either. Those forced military and boot camps have been generally shown to be a disaster. I was reading an expose about one that was run on Waiheke twenty or so years ago where boys were being sexually assaulted, beaten within an inch of their lives, told to dig their own graves etc. They came back angrier at the world than when they left. Likewise, teaching an angry teenager how to fire weapons and get strong and good at hand to hand combat comes with its own risks as well.

I get the premised behind it on how you should always try to rehabilitate a young offender before throwing them in the can, where they just get angrier and better connected - but the reality is, there is a certain percentage of the youth population who just won't abide by society's norms and who therefore the public deserve to be protected from. I remember one prolific juvenile offender who we had a circle on the muster room calendar for his 17th birthday, because then we could start locking him up as a matter of course when he got picked up doing crime (CYP law means you can only arrest a juvie in real narrow circumstances)

I'd like to see a greater use of electronically monitored bail for juvies. Often they get put with an extended family member (such as grandma) who either lies for them or is simply incapable of controlling them. The reality is that Police resources are incredibly stretched, so these guys might get check bail checked three times a week (there can be up to 100 people on curfew related bail in any one policing area). Or else, we used to hear stories of guys going out immediately after being checked, knowing the cops are unlikely to check them twice in an evening. EM bail would stop this because the flag would go up as soon as they left.

I understand EM bail is quite pricey and resource intensive, but it's gotta be better than the social cost innocent people being repeatedly victimised, hurt or killed by kids joyriding in stolen cars.

@canefan said in NRL 2022:

@mariner4life said in NRL 2022:

@aucklandwarlord said in NRL 2022:

Jones appears to have named a team without a whole heap of surprises. Wasn't expecting a reinvention of the wheel, but I was at least expecting Shaun Johnson to be playing club footy somewhere in South Auckland this weekend. He's been woeful and isn't deserving of his starting spot.

It's the same day David!!

Same team. Same holes. Jazz at prop. Fucking Berry?

Do we have anyone left to jump in? Personally if we have some promising youth players I'd rather see them play. Having said that I don't think it is reasonable to expect Stacey to come in and chage everyone. If he can try to instill some pride in performance and some accountability that will be a start

Aaron Pene or Elisia Katoa could at least slot in on the bench, bringing Bunty or Dunamis Lui in to start at prop and Jazz could move to back into lock or similar. That would, if nothing else, add some more size into our pack. At this point we've got nothing to lose - why not give Pene some more game time, given he was signed for his potential.

Jones appears to have named a team without a whole heap of surprises. Wasn't expecting a reinvention of the wheel, but I was at least expecting Shaun Johnson to be playing club footy somewhere in South Auckland this weekend. He's been woeful and isn't deserving of his starting spot.

@Bovidae said in NRL 2022:

@aucklandwarlord said in NRL 2022:

The owner seems like a real ballbag - why is he even in the pub arguing with the players? Then we hamstring the club's salary cap by releasing our best prop.

I still can't believe Robinson (and George) did this. Robinson is supposedly a successful businessman but why didn't they call Lodge's bluff. He has been vocal in not wanting to move to NZ, so would likely have not taken up his option for 2023. Let's see who really was the alpha male and had the balls.

I am assuming if the player asks for a release the conditions for the salary cap are different.

Given they had to pay him out his full contract, they should have absolutely called his bluff. Tell him he's moving back to NZ and will be playing for the Mount Albert Lions if his attitude is shit. Either that, or he walks away without a payout and is free to play where he wants.

@bayimports said in NRL 2022:

Do they take on a completely new model that doesnt focus on defence aka the Walkers? Well possibly yes, we can't defend now, it would mean we need a functioning attack though, which we also don't have.

The Walkers were keen when we inexplicably chose Brown instead. I think the Warriors need to go back to them, cap in hand, realising that they now have zero bargaining chips, and lock them in for a couple of seasons. At worst, they're shit and we suck for the next two seasons, but we've sucked for the last two, and we now have a dented salary cap as well. We'll almost certainly lose Walsh at the end of next season too.

We're worst in the NRL for defence at the moment, so I guess we probably can't go much worse anyway. At least make our attack exciting.

@mariner4life said in NRL 2022:

@aucklandwarlord can't agree on Kearney, he was so very ordinary and needed to go, probably a lot earlier.

Jazz gone stitched up being played at prop. You're right he tries really hard, but him being penned in to the 17 every week shows just how limited our roster is.

If they were going to fire him, they should have done so in the 2019 season. I felt that even though we were 2 from 6 or something that Kearney was faring okay with what was thrown at him at the time (stuck offshore in a pandemic, players wanting to go home etc). We had a decent 2018 season under him too, but I agree he was probably ordinary in the scheme of NRL coaches, but he was still ultimately better than what he was replaced with in Brown.

How Shaun Johnson remains in the side is beyond me. I genuinely thought he had left the field against Manly because I didn't see him for about twenty minutes. Send that guy back to reserve grade. I'd rather we copped the wooden spoon from here but blooded some new players so we can hit the ground running next season that stick it out with the same players who aren't cutting it.

I've been a diehard Warriors supporter since the beginning but it's hard to think of a worse time for the club than right now.

The owner seems like a real ballbag - why is he even in the pub arguing with the players? Then we hamstring the club's salary cap by releasing our best prop.

We fired Kearney, who was faring okay, given the situation he found himself in and took on a bum of a coach with a 20 something percent win record who, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a bum and ended up with a similar win percentage.

Jazz Tevaga is hearty as hell, and arguably tries the hardest week in, week out. But he's 98kg and is our starting prop. I'm picking there isn't a lighter prop in the comp this year, or in recent years. How are our forwards meant to dominate when they're 15 - 20kg light?

Stacey Jones is a club legend, but that doesn't translate to being a good coach. I'd prefer we cleaned the current regime out and got the Walker brothers in. We need to take a chance, because what we've been doing hasn't worked in the past.

Even more frustrating from an NRL-wide perspective is that contracts don't appear to be worth the paper they're written on. Guys signing with a New Zealand club and then saying that they're not willing to relocate to NZ and being granted immediate releases. Payne Haas being signed on potential by the Broncos for less than he's currently worth and now trying to renegotiate his contract halfway through because he thinks he's being underpaid. The contract/agent system is well and truly broken.

@canefan said in NRL 2022:

@KiwiMurph said in NRL 2022:

@mariner4life said in NRL 2022:

Brown is a shit coach

The thing is Brown was a shit coach at Newcastle for years.

Why did the Warriors think he would suddenly turn into a good coach?

The Walker brothers were dead keen to take up the reins.

Paul Kent: Ipswich Jets are changing the way rugby league is played - Ipswich Jets

THE Ipswich Jets, in the Queensland Cup, are about to change the way rugby league is played. The Jets do not use block plays, an attacking move used ad nauseam among all 16 NRL clubs right now. They never wrestle in defence. Indeed, they prefer to let their opposition have quick play-the-balls,...

.

They are untested, but done very well at QLD Cup level. I fail to see how they could be any worse than Brown.

Jul 16, 2020  /  Warriors

Warriors CEO: Why Walker brothers are in coaching frame

Ben and Shane Walker are known for their attacking innovations but their man management and defensive strategies are also why they're in the frame to fill the Warriors' coaching vacancy, according to CEO Cameron George.

It's like George almost panicked and went for safe picks.

These brothers are NRL coaches in waiting - Ipswich News Today

As far as I can see they are still waiting for a chance. FFS we need to take a chance and do something different if we are to have any chance of getting back to something resembling the glory days

They were my preferred pick back when Brown got selected. I love the Warriors, but for a club who are prone to doing the same old thing and expecting the same old results, I thought that selecting an untried product like the Walker brothers gave us a chance to do something different and hopefully get a different result.

As M4L noted, Brown was a woeful coach before joining the Warriors - how did we expect he was going to be anything different here?

Pretty grim watching last night. Hard to remember a worse half of footy since some of those massacres the Kiwis used to take against that star-studded Kangaroo team in the early 2000s

@nzzp said in Blues vs Moana Pasifika 2022:

Great argument for a twenty minute red

I'm a fairly casual observer of super rugby these days, never been a huge fan of the blues, but definitely not a fan of that decision.

Disclaimer: I also don't know the finer nuances of the new red card rules, so I'm more than happy to be told my opinion is stupid.

Surely Clark is the more vulnerable player in the air, and the ref using the justification that "he was reckless and mistimed it because he moved from the chargedown action to trying to protect himself mid air". I'd have thought that when he realised there was going to be a collision, it's natural reflex to protect oneself and that's not hugely indicative of anything more than a guy not wanting to land on his head.

Surely at some point in contact sport, you have to accept that unfortunate contact does happen. Much like a head clash. Penalty at best and move on.

For an ordinary person, the unprovoked assault probably would have been home-detention worthy depending on how badly injured the female victim was and her views at sentencing.

It's not uncommon for people to escape jail on fraud charges in the vicinity of $100k , especially if reparation is ordered or they have some ability to repay the money. Also (sadly) especially if they're white and middle class.

@kirwan said in Zac Guildford:

@tim said in Zac Guildford:

@kirwan said in Zac Guildford:

The guy desperately needs therapy.

More like he needs punishment. Sounds like an unrepentant sociopath. Therapy would just help him lie.

Disagree. It could help him realise he’s not a good person, and help him improve.

Alternative is either lock him up for good or let him continue causing harm to anyone associated to him.

It’s in our best interests to treat people like this. And part of that is accepting consequences, which is why I get pissed at the wet bus tickets he gets slapped with by these judges.

Agreed. For mine the most concerning thing is the escalation of his behaviour. Started with that incident in one of the Pacific Islands where he harassed the female triathlete, assaulted a couple of people and ended up stark naked in the bar. That was kinda swept under the carpet as "lads on tour" type behaviour.

Within ten years, it had escalated to a full blown unprovoked assault on a female, and willfully ripping off his grandfather over a prolonged period of time.

His employers sound like decent people, who are genuinely trying to help him. He has been given every chance to succeed, so I'd like to think that if he's back before the courts again, they'll be aiming for a punitive sentence, rather than a rehabilitative one.