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A methamphetamine addict who was charged with burglary of the Wellsford Police Station after smashing his way into the facility earlier this year - claiming he was seeking refuge from a road rage incident - has been sentenced to community detention.
Jesse James Webb, 33, appeared before Judge Grant Fraser in North Shore District Court today after pleading guilty to intentional damage of the police station, which carries a maximum punishment of seven years’ imprisonment.
The police station burglary charge was dropped but he was also sentenced for several burglary and theft charges in nearby Northland dating back to 2021.
“Not many people break into police stations,” the judge quipped during the hearing. “Most people break out of them - or try to.”
Webb was arrested late on the night of January 16 after grabbing a metal pole and smashing the front gate of the police building, which is located in the northernmost reach of the Auckland region. He then hopped a fence and went into a secure yard of the property.
“The defendant walked around the rear of the station and smashed the laundry window and the window of the rear entrance door,” the agreed summary of facts for the case states. “After smashing the rear entrance door, the defendant reached through the broken window and opened the door.
“[He then] entered the station and walked out the front entrance.”
When asked why he had damaged the building, Webb said he was trying to get officers’ attention.
Webb later told authorities that he had been trying to purchase methamphetamine that night when the deal went sour, with the seller keeping Webb’s money and the drugs for himself. Webb said he and his partner were chased through the streets and his car was made inoperable by the drug supplier. They ran to the police station, he said, after three carloads of people arrived at the supplier’s request.
The judge agreed the incident did not appear to be pre-meditated.
Wellsford Police Station. Photo / Google
“That seemed to be a reaction to concern about what might happen to you and your partner,” he said.
However, the earlier burglaries - also related to methamphetamine addiction - did have an element of pre-meditation, the judge said.
Webb and another man used a hammer to smash the front glass door of a Four Square grocery store in Kaiwaka around 2.25am on the night of July 3, 2021, according to court documents. They then ran off with only $300 worth of items - including ice cream, confectionery and earplugs - but managed to cause $1200 worth of damage in the process.
That same morning, they returned to the Mangawhai Heads Holiday Park where they had parked for the night and stole property from underneath caravan awnings and from the communal kitchen and toilet blocks.
Three days later, they parked at Langs Beach in the Whangārei District and walked the foreshore until they found a walkway to a private residence. Webb hid in the bushes while his co-defendant entered the house by smashing a glass panel with a wooden club, court documents state.
The pair left with an estimated $18,000 worth of property, including a digital camera, credit cards, two mountain bikes and two fishing rods taken from the homeowner’s boat.
Police found some of the items at Webb’s property a few days later.
Defence lawyer Tony Beach said today that his client took responsibility for participating in the mini crime spree but felt he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. His father had recently died and while trying to cope with the loss his co-defendant had introduced him to methamphetamine, to which he quickly got hooked, he said.
“He had me by the balls over drugs as I got methamphetamine from him,” Webb claimed of being coerced into helping with the burglaries.
The co-defendant, meanwhile, told police he knew nothing of the burglaries and that Webb had brought the pilfered items into the home where he was staying without his knowledge while he napped.
Crown prosecutor Karlene O’Halloran said there was no evidence of coercion or control, but the judge said he believed there was a power imbalance between addict and supplier.
“I have no doubt he had been coercing Mr Webb to assist him,” he said.
Under normal circumstances, Judge Fraser said, the outcome of such a case would be home detention. But his current address was not suitable for an electronically monitored sentence, the judge noted.
Because Webb had no other convictions and because he had been on restrictive bail conditions for nearly three years - due in part to court delays caused by Covid-19 - the judge decided to give him a break and allow less restrictive community detention instead.
He was also ordered to serve intensive supervision, including a stipulation he attend drug counselling if ordered by his probation officer, and to pay $500 restitution - the excess the Langs Beach property owner had to pay his insurance company.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
