Man Pleads Guilty To Unlawfully Dumping Waste
In Magistrates Court this morning [Mar 30], a 59-year-old man pleaded guilty to unlawfully dumping waste, in the form of a computer desk, in a public place, with the Court ruling that the matter was to be discharged.
Though the offence carries a $2,000 maximum fine, Magistrate Khamisi Tokunbo ruled that the matter was to be discharged.
Facts read in to the Magistrate were that someone had witnessed Michael Smith dumping in St George’s in August 2014 and had informed police.
Police caught up with him later the same day; he admitted the action and, with the police, went back to retrieve the old desk.
He told the Magistrate that it been “a stupid thing to do.” He then asked the Magistrate, “Please, don’t lock me up.”
After checking the law and confirming that the maximum sentence was $2,000, noting that it was a prevalent offence, he was likely to get publicity from the charge, and considering his early guilty plea, the Magistrate ruled that the matter should be discharged.
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Everyone does it. It’s a prevalent offense.
Oh, that’s OK then. As long as people keep dumping their crap on the side of the road, that’s OK. Why bother taking it all the way to the proper waste disposal site.
He should STILL have been fined..whether or not its prevalent or even if he did go back and collect it. So the message we send out its OK to dump because if you get caught and go back and collect you’ll get off anyway.
How about making him do xxxx hours of community service and make him clean the railway trail….lots of dumping there, I should know as we cleaned it for years….maybe after 5 hours of backbreaking work, he might think twice before doing it again.
Perfect!
Judge should’ve said ,” no I won’t lock you up at all , but I’ll be giving you a royal cut@ss , so as when you take your next dump it’ll be painful .”
He pled guilty & expressed remorse did he. More like he is sorry that he got caught, this time. At a minimum he should have been fined in the amount of a good estimate of cost of police time & prosecution time to get him into court rsther than the cost being carried by the taxpayer.
That cost must be well over $1000.00
As it stands, he got away without even getting a slap on the wrist. This after the uproar over a recent dumping elsewhere recently.
Maybe these truckers should start dumping at the Magistrates homes. Bet you would see some heavy fines if that happened.
So what is the point of any enforcement then? Ridiculous waste of our money. He should have been fined. Community service for those who do not immediately remove the waste.
Some of the judiciary need some serious education on our environment methinks! Government no longer has the money to clean up after you.
Act responsibly or pay the price, but there has to be a deterrent or price.
Sarcasm, in that the story most certainly did mention him, thus he got the publicity the magistrate was trying to avoid.