Man Defends Property: Is Prosecuted.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10489186

They aren't prosecuting the other tagger.

As I've said before: when the situation gets to the point that people have lost trust in the police and feel the only way to prevent harm is to take the law into their own hands, the fault lies with the police.

Man chases down and murders a 15-year-old - should go the fuck down.
That idiot of a new mayor in Manukau comes out and says "all crime starts with tagging". WTF?! It wasn't the tagger who committed a murder here, it was allegedly some "50y/o businessman".

And Vads he wasn't preventing harm by murdering the kid AT ALL. He chased him down. Then stabbed him.
No further harm being prevented, but massive (possibly the worst) harm perpertrated instead.

All allegedly of course, and perhaps final evidence will contradict the initial witnesses "chased him down and stabbed him" assertions. But right now, I am appalled by what the guy did and even more appalled that the Mayor of Manukau claims tagging is the root of all crime, when this kid only tagged while a presumedly non-tagging businessman murdered someone.

You are assuming that this was an act of a desperate man who no longer has any confidence in the police or the justice system and has decided to take the law into his own hands....

.....as opposed to an act of an agro idiot who, in a moment lacking all sense and judgment, took a child's life.

He should be prosecuted.

And g-dub, totally agree with your sentiments. I found it so disturbing to read the news report of this 15 year old murdered for tagging only to see it followed by an article about how serious youth crime always starts with tagging. Good old Herald, subtly supporting a murderer. Why don't they just come out and say it, in a headline: "Local businessman murders 15 year old tagger: what a hero"

This is a 50yr old businessman, I doubt he achieved success in his career by being an 'aggro idiot'.

I'm more with Vadinho on this - it's more likely that this man has made his feelings known about the taggers before and the police (bless them) didn't give it much attention,

possibly because they were too busy pack-raping girls in Rotorua.

A perfect example of the amazing double standard shown in this case.
Young Maori guy stabs a shop worker - he's an appalling murderer who should be locked away (and in some cases neutered apparently)
Older "businessman" stabs a kid - poor ol businessman, jeez it's so tough having paint on your fence that you are OK to kill someone for it.

I will add that I expect there to be some kind of attenuating circumstances etc, but the instant "not OK for a young Maori kid to murder someone, but OK for a businessman to" that's popped up everywhere floors me.

We know as much about one case as the other, except the assumptions that are jumped too are so far apart.

I think this is a good example of why police should pay more attention to low level crime.

Here is a list of things i have personally been involved in where the police didnt bother turning up or didnt present evdience/ call witnesses at a trial.

*$47000 of provable fraud (admitted) - they said to try and get the money back in civil court.

*Being intentionally run off the road - got a letter saying they had taken statements from all the witnesses, that was 14 months ago - nothing happened.

*My car being hit by a drunk/coked up driver who then went on to smash up the police station. (the prosecution forgot to tell the witnesses the case was being heard so charges dismissed).

I imagine people get even less response to tagging, vandalism and theft in south auckland.

Now if police arent doing what society expects of them (ie protecthing life and property) then it is a GIVEN that some people are going to take the law into their own hands and you get this case of massive overreaction and other cases of mistaken identity.

Its all well and good saying that its just tagging but i imagine when you come to work every morning to find you have more stuff to clean off/paint over you would start to get pretty pissed off. Throw into that some domestic situation or financial stresses and something is likely to go wrong.

lol and successful businessman NEVER have agro or idiotic moments? how ELSE can you describe stabbing a 15 year old kid to death for the sake of a tag? HARDLY a businessman using all his acumen, logic and judgment.

the double standards here are fucking shocking. where is the typical knee jerk reaction to a vicious murder that we are oh so accustomed to from middle new zealand? why is no one vying for his blood? demanding a public lynching at aotea square? calling for the return of the death penalty? or better yet, ringing up talk back radio?

Because people can identify with being frustrated with taggers and dont particularly identify with wanting to stab a dairy owner?

Thats not to say they agree with murdering the taggers but i bet theres a number of people who have wished harm to taggers before.

A guy the next street up from us a couple of years ago (about ten) was finally so fed up with people tagging his fence so he waited one night and caught one of the kids doing it. He called the cops - they said 'let him go'.. so he did - after spray painting the kid all over! His hair, face, clothes etc. Very very funny.

Anyway, the police turn up and say he's under arrest. The kid denies tagging even though he had a can of paint on him and the cops even knew his tag name. The kid's parents said his clothes were ruined and the guy would have to buy new ones (of course, everything was $200 per item) and that their kid would never do something like that.

The neighbourhood banded together to support the guy in his flat refusal to give the kid any money. A QC and a couple of very successful lawyers fronted up with him at the police station... In the end the cops let it go.

The tagging stopped (for a couple of weeks).

The guy is a legend in my books. I'm not sure why no-one just asked what a 15 year old from Manukau was doing in Remuera at midnight during the week??

R

Indeed the guy might have 'lost it', but that doesn't even remotely excuse murdering a kid for the sake of a tag. We can make this about the police and their lack of response to low level crime, the supposedly unscrupulous behaviour of the victim, we can even make it about gangsta rap, the truth of the matter is he must be prosecuted for the crime that he has committed and nothing less will do.

Would love to get some of that dye that BMW uses to stain car thieves. Or the anti riot stuff that stinks like fuck for 3 days.

set up a wall with a video watching it and when some taggers come along, the wall fights back


(see no one likes taggers).

On this current case.... just imagine for a second the guy had just stabbed the kid on the arm and he'd run off.

What do you think would have happened? Would the kid have told the police? Or would he have gone to hospital with some 'story' and then returned to the guys house with a posse and dealt to him?

Defending your property is a lose-lose situation once you get nasty with weapons. The guy was waaaay out of line and sounds like he might have flipped and gone postal. I don't think it's murder though - manslaughter for sure, but not murder.

R

BG: indeed, i dont think my post excused it at all - i said it was inevitable that people will take the law into their own hands if they have no faith in the police system. And vigilante justice isnt exactly discriminating or measured is it.

vigilante actions gain local media support

more news at 11

You seriously believe that some kid tagging has enough of a bearing on his murder that it should be a main talking point? That having your fence tagged is provocation to murder? That this guy who stabbed a 15 year old to death should be viewed differently? I have no problem with people reacting angrily to someone tagging their property and trying to stop it/scare them off. This is nothing like that - he chased down a kid and stabbed him to death.

The guy who did it is nutjob scum (as is that idiot who stabbed the dairy guy because the robbery wasn't going his way) and living proof that taggers are pretty minor criminals compared to some so-called upstanding businessmen - a point completely missed by Len Brown.

I dont think you can view them as the same. One was someone committing a crime then committing murder. The other was someone committing a crime and then being murdered.

Society has a lot less sympathy for people who commit crimes - which i think is completely understandable.

Again - im not in anyway excusing it myself, simply discussing why some people aren't jumping up and down about the tagger dying.

and it should be strongly condemned, no? yet all i'm seeing from you bob is a whole lot of understanding laced with a some generic disapproval of the disproportionate nature of his conduct.

Firstly you'd have to be an idiot to think it was somehow justified (or vadz ).

Secondly I have little doubt this person will get much sympathy from the courts.

Thirdly it isn't my style to jump on the bandwagon, i prefer to focus on the points that arent being adequately covered in the thread. That may be because i am an argumentative bastard.

You and garethw brought up the double standard that exists in the medias reporting on this and the lack of talkback outrage (though i dontlisten so have no idea whats being said) - I explained the lack of outrage. I also discussed what might have been some of the background to this incident. I didnt use the reasons for the lack of outrage as reasons why the murderer is less guilty.

Admittedly its short on facts but people also see things like this.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4379352a10.html

Professional musician Jimmy Mason has been charged with two counts of assaulting a child after an incident on the Bridge of Remembrance in central Christchurch last month.

The 49-year-old Christchurch man admitted to flicking his son's ear to reprimand him for riding dangerously near a busy street on December 19 when he spoke to The Press in an article on January 14, in which he complained about the way the incident was handled by the police.

i guess the tone of your posts has appeared to me to be sympathetic towards the offender, more so than condemnatory. comments that you have made about the ”inevitability” of vigilante justice where there is a lack of police response and the indiscriminate/unmeasured nature of it inevitably leading to something going wrong, whilst valid points, do connote an excusing/sympathetic/understanding message, although i accept that you do not think the offender's actions could be excused or justified. i guess for my part, even with all the factors which you have pointed out present, i don't see anything 'inevitable' about a crime such as this. whilst there may have been many factors which singularly or collectively led to this crime, strong condemnation for the offender is nonetheless warranted, in the same way as you would expect for any other senseless killing.

I strongly condemn the actions of this person.

Fucked if i would chase them down the road, let alone stab on of them.

Id do something more along the lines of automatic wall retaliation- water hoses, dyes, liquid pig shit etc.

I do sympathise with people who feel they cannot rely on the police to protect them but i have little doubt this guy will get punished. I would hope (pending more facts) that he would get manslaughter rather than murder but it could go either way.

yeah it depends on the circumstances. the fact that he chased him down armed with a knife might indicate an intent to kill or cause GBH which in turn would support a murder charge. but there may be other circumstances which we are not aware of and which might make the manslaughter charge more appropriate.

and in tokoroa a child took a man's life and maybe in taupo a woman's also taken by a 14 yo kid

dats how it rolls

I don't think you can blame the police

the fact is, the police do charge a lot of people for tagging, and they do get prosecuted....if they get caught, are identified, they get arrested

I think its fair to say that the police are not on top of tagging.

of course they're not

they're not on top of drink-driving either - keeps happening

but that doesn't equal the FAULT of the police (obviously)

people over-estimate what the police and the justice system can do/achieve

especially to "stop" crime

if we lived in a police state, with police crawling the streets, and on every corner, we might see less of this sort of crime - but that's not the sort of country we have

or want. is it?

precisely!

we seem to be on the same wavelength, NR

WTF? it's nothing to fucking do with racism. If the businessman was Maori and the tagger was white it wouldn';t change my view... until the law is efficient, people can't be blamed for taking it into their own hands.

I can even spout you chapter and verse from the Malayan Insurgency and Vietnam etc about how stability can ONLY result from faith in the police...

BG as always you only focus on the particulars of the crime, not the general aspect. In this case, we have evidence of a continual dysfunction - an inveterate tagger, a repetitive criminal. The individual harm of this crime is only of partial relevance when compared to the general duty of enforcing obedience.

Failure to desist from illegal behaviour - regardless of whether that behaviour is tagging or dumping toxic waste into a river - has to be immediately dealt with. It's the same with a dog that attacks sheep. While the individual sheep that dies isn't the issue, it's the fact that the safety of the flock can no longer be assured if there is a rogue dog.

Order and security rests on obedience to the laws. It's rather simple. Now, we all make mistakes; that's a given. But when a repetitive pattern of either a) disobedience or b) failure of the lawful authorities to respond to crime develops, then measures must be taken to ensure the reordering of societal elements.

People see crimes as individual events, and only worry about the lethality/extent - x dollars, y dead. They forget that every crime is disobedience first, and then specifics second.

Well... there's a fuckload of tagging everywhere. Could be a resourcing issue. I'll say it again, I think the quantity of resources that police allocate to murders and serious crashes is disproportionately high.

There's an old expression: when you don't have much time, go for the low hanging fruit first.

In other words - in a resource constrained environment, do the quick wins.

JH you need to study history. Especially peacekeeping etc. When there is chaos, then a short, sudden application of order and discipline results in sudden security improvements.

You go hard, THEN ease off.

it's at least partly a resourcing issue

you have to remember that a lot of tagging is done under the cover of night, in obscure places etc

the perpetrators aren't caught because they are not detected

if they are detected, the police apply their resources to those offenders

possibly the odd lead doesn't get followed up that could get followed up etc

same as almost every other crime that happens in this city eg burglaries, car thefts, vandalism

just having more police/more police time involved, won't necessarily make much difference to the number of crimes occurring

...then flares up again?

Sometimes. Cambodia, Bosnia are more peaceful now than they were.

Order! Order! Order!

possibly the odd thing doesnt get followed up?!

The police are waaaay fucking under resourced and under skilled at the moment. I was talking to an ex undercover cop recently and she said she has gone back to help on occasion and been completely underwhelmed by even basic procedure abilities of the current cops. The new recruits aren't learning good skills/process either because their supervisors are just as inexperienced.

Anyway maybe youre right its not the polices fault it is a policing fault - responsibility goes up.

okay maybe that was a slight euphemism

part of the problem - police struggle to maintain current numbers - rush new recruits through a 6 month (!) training course - they have reduced both the physical and mental requirements - many leave within 1-2 years because they struggle to cope and/or the real world of policing is not what they imagined - back to square one - need to recruit more cops etc etc - vicious circle

thus the lack of experience in the force as bob has alluded to above - could cause a real crisis in policing in this country....

it's also partly a sentencing issue

the offence only carries a max of 3 months imprisonment

generally the offenders are young (or very young)

even if they are prosecuted in the adult jurisdiction (>17) - first time taggers will get diversion, second timers community work/reparation, even on a third or fourth offence imprisonment is not guaranteed..

because the max is only 3 months, only a short term can be imposed (a few weeks) - a few weeks inside won't deter a lot of these people

The government took away our right to defend our own property.

This makes it the job of the Police to defend our property - all of it, not just the big stuff.

Give us back the right to defend our own stuff, or if you really don’t trust us then at least give us enough police to do the bloody job!


ps; I don’t think stabbing some kid for tagging your wall would constitute reasonable force… lol

The man wasn't defending private property when he MURDERED the kid.

The property had already been damaged, what we did was revenge against someone for damage of property, not defense.

There is no ethical argument that can defend him for doing this.

This is not an argument for or against using force to defend ones property or an example of it, as the guy wasn't defending anything.

As far as I can see it was more a "crime of passion" (angry at damage to property), bordering on pre meditated murder (he had to go out and get the knife etc).

Of course had the situation been different, for instance if the youth was armed, and he went out there armed to defend himself, youth attacked him, then sure there would be an element of defense in it.

But this was not the case.

I hope they throw the book at him.

And this is coming from someone who has a strong belief in property rights and the right to bear arms/self defense. Having these beliefs doesn't justify murder.

similar to that case in texas where some guy whilst on the phone to police shot a black man across the street who was damaging property

wot you can't shoot black men in texas anymore

no wonder the US is in such a bad way

last I read they were debating about whether to charge him or not for disturbing the peace :-/

wrong - you can actually use reasonable force to defend your property

this is verifiably true!

that's what i thought too...was confused by trapper's comment

Yes, but you its what is defined as reasonable.

I.e. while it might be ok under the crimes act, I'm sure its still an offense under the Arms Act 1983 for instance to use a firearm in self defense.

i.e like at SAI when the guy shot the machete did, he was charged with possession charges...

i can't find anything in the arms act which says it is an offence to use a firearm in self defence.

the guy who was charged with unlawful possession of firearm was rightfully charged. that had nothing to do with using the firearm in self defence, in fact they never charged him in relation to firing the gun, just unlawful possession...

I wasn't saying it was.

It may however be an example of a guy getting increasingly frustrated over his wall being repetitively tagged, with himself unable to legally do anything to stop it, and the police totally uninterested in the matter - and so finally flipping out, losing the plot, and stabbing somebody!

Yes but ‘reasonable force’ without ‘striking or doing bodily harm’ doesn’t really leave much in the way of force does it. Lol

You basically can’t touch the offender unless you are very careful not to hurt him in anyway.

you're quite correct.

I suppose what the law allows, at least initially, is to physically manhandle the person to get them off/away from your property

Its an offense in the arms act to present a firearm at someone else, let alone dischage. There is no exemption/defense in the Arms act for self defense.

but presentation of a firearm would be captured by the definition of self-defence in the Crimes Act if it was a reasonable and proportionate response to a situation

yes but it is probably unworkable. If you have enough time to assess the risk and _then_ go get the gun then you should have been able to flee (assuming theres a means to escape).

If on the other hand you get the gun then go to assess the risk - like go to investigate the noises downstairs - you might find a burglar with no weapon. If he runs at you and you shoot would that constitute proportionate to the situation?

I think its fair to say that the police and courts actively discourage any use of firearms in defence. Even when police do it you can see the types of contradictory witness accounts that emerge. If you get unlikely with a witness who thinks you should have tried to reason with the knife wielding crack head, you end up being dragged through the courts for 12 months even if you're eventually cleared.

I agree that self-defence (both of person and property) frequently involves a quite unreal post facto analysis

but I needed to mention self-defence of property to balance trapper's comment "the government took away our right to defend our property"

defence of property is still on our statute books as a defence

now, this brings me back to trapper's comment, which is typical of many right-wing groups

but I wonder how historically accurate it is

has it ever been LAWFUL to use extreme violence (or kill) in order to defend property?

Sure it has. Human history is ~6000 years old :>

The fact that the penalty for theft has often been death indicates there is no necessary disproportion.

I was thinking more along the lines of modern, not ancient history, and from the western/anglo-saxon heritage

your example contains an important distinction - if death was meted out as punishment for theft, then that was still done at the hands of the State

that's not the same thing as a generalised right of the citizenry to kill thieves

there was no such thing as the state back then was there? not as we know it

or its equivalent: the Sovereign, the law-making power

"thou shalt not kill" goes back a long way in the christian world

I don't think that's its historically accurate to talk about a God-given right to kill that belonged to all of us, sanctioned by law, and then one day the nasty Government came along and stripped us of that right

or I might be wrong

it's an interesting topic...

yeah well I wonder just how far that reached in reality by comparison with today

guess they didn't have taggers back then

or more precisely, a God-given, sanctioned right to kill to defend "property"

again I might be wrong

it could be that trapper is referring to a time that existed before anything like the modern-day state

but then, concepts of property, class-structures and societies were very different back then too

no, they did

if you look at the history of graffiti, it goes back to Roman times (and probably earlier)


and vandalism has always existed (just look at the etymology of the word)

except the vandals weren't really vandals

true dat!

vads.. seriously.

They should just lock up that kulak for being a bloodsucker.

The murder just proves what little regard those types have for human life...

Actually you're probably right... would be interesting to look at the rights of self defence (vs. the rights of the village/state to kill the thief).

The graffiti artist is ill-disciplined and counter-revolutionary.

heh I'm always right

anyway, i'm still waiting for trapper to come back and enlighten us further on this historical point

I know 1981 was few years back now, but still I think it is a bit unfair to characterise it as ‘nothing like a modern-day state’?!?

http://gpacts.knowledge-basket.co.nz/gpacts/reprint/text/1961/an/043.html

http://gpacts.knowledge-basket.co.nz/gpacts/public/text/1980/se/063se2.html

I still can't believe the Herald coverage on this - they've trotted out the ol "evil taggers" articles. Floors me.

Must have taken my lead :>

Do an LLD on it though... be a bloody awesome read and probably could get external funding!

you're right, would be an interesting topic....

The jist of it: Someone fucks with your property, you can try to defend it / get it back without harming them. If they refuse to co-operate, continue to damage / steal your shit, then this constitutes an unprovoked assault against you - which you are then free to respond to in any proportionate manner.

Anyway I have just posted links to the existing Act before 1981 and to the subsequent amendment. Perhaps it would make sense to click these links and have a look if you want to see exactly what changed?? lol

yes I did that!


but I thought your objection was to the part which says you cannot strike a person in defence of property?

it appears that was already there BEFORE the amendment

so no, I don't interpret the 1980 amendment in the same light as you i.e. "government taking away right to defend our property"

it simply removed the complicated distinction between provoked and unprovoked assaults in terms of self-defence (not defence of property pr se)

If that is what you are really complaining about here - the loss of continuing interference with property as an unprovoked assault against the person - I cannot accord this the same significance as you do - have you actually read s 49?

it was awfully artificial and unworkable, and certainly wouldn't allow anything like the actions of the murderer here ...

sorry - s48 of the old law

Justhanging, I’m not sure what tangent you are going off on now?? lol

How on earth would the legal right to use ‘no more force than is necessary’ to defend my property suddenly justify murdering some kid? What a truly bizarre jump in logic?!

1. the old law still did not allow a property-owner to initiate violence against a trespasser...so your original comment that the government took away the right to defend our property was much too broad

2. there is a conceptual problem in determining what was proportionate force to something that was deemed to be an assault, but not actually an assault

3. the right to defend a dwelling-house from a person breaking and entering allows reasonable force with no prohibition on striking - this has always been the case

4. in effect you are reading far more practical significance into the old law than I do - at best it allowed a very low-level form of use of force in certain circumstances

you have to ask yourself: what would be necessary force to stop the tagger? grabbing the spray-can off him maybe or pushing him or pulling him away from the fence, surely?

well, that's allowed under the law as it stands

wtf, have you missed this entire conversation??

no. different people in this thread are likely to hold different views on what law should apply to these situations and also the degree of force that is needed (if any) in this particular instance.

you seem to be very passionate in your defence of the law pre-1980. that's your view - that's fine.

you seem to be placing great store on the ability to strike or do bodily harm to a trespasser in the case of a continuing interference. (even though such force must only be what is "necessary." )

Actually I just made a casual comment on the fact that the government has all but banned us from defending our own property - so it can be frustrating when the police aren’t interested in stepping in to do this for us.

Other than that I was just correcting you on your ever more obscure tangents.
‘you can actually use reasonable force to defend your property’ – no you can’t.
‘trapper is referring to a time that existed before anything like the modern-day state’ – well up until 1981.
‘the law before 1981 still didn’t allow reasonable force’ – yes it did.
‘well it certainly wouldn't have allowed you to murder a tagger’ – who on Gods earth said it would?!?
etc

I misunderstood your initial post.

I thought you were referring to a legal right to initiate violence against a trespasser along the lines of what the property owner (?) did here and to a similar degree - simply because of the thread topic.

thus my obscure tangents!

yes, you can.

to the extent that I referred to above.

which should be sufficient force in most cases.

but you clearly disagree on that.

you have to remember that if a person is resisting the use of reasonable force to remove them from your property, it's likely that they are not doing so entirely passively.

it's likely that they have used or applied some force to YOU. which then brings in the personal self-defence rights under s 48.

thus, most cases involve an over-lap between defence of property and defence of the person. it's usually artificial to look at defence of property in a vacuum.

if we take tagging as an example, the police ARE interested if the taggers can be caught or identified. of course the police aren't going to apply an inordinate amount of their resources to tagging cases where there is a lack of evidence eg where the tagger has left the scene and nobody can identify the person.

if you go down to the District Court you will see a large number of prosecutions for tagging and wilful damage every single day.

the most sensible thing the property-owner could have done here, was to simply tell the tagger to stop what he was doing, while calling the police on his mobile phone -and telling the tagger that's what he was doing. if the guy carried on tagging, he'd be a bloody idiot wouldn't he.