Friends, foes, they're all fair game

It's easy to justify burglary, a young criminal tells DIANA McCURDY. Stuff is there for the taking.

Rush Da Don Mega is not one to suffer pangs of conscience. The Mangere 18-year-old estimates he has burgled hundreds of houses - possibly more than a thousand - and he doesn't feel remorse about any.

"I've got no heart. Ha ha. No, I have got a heart, but ... "

Rush believes burglary has nothing to do with morality - it's about opportunity.

"They are suckers," he says of his victims. "That's what I used to call them: suckers. They don't think before they go out. You've got to think of everything. But they just think, 'Oh, the plants haven't been watered, oh I'll do that and I'll go now'. It makes me sick when they do that. Some even leave money on the table."

Rush cuts a fairly amicable figure. He dresses like a wannabe gangsta-rapper and peppers his conversation with ghetto slang, but still has the awkwardness of a teenager. It would be almost endearing, if you didn't know what he was capable of.

Any house is fair game, Rush says. He has even burgled his friends' houses. It wasn't intentional, but once he was inside and saw their family photos on the wall, there was no way he was going to turn around and leave. This is a career, after all.

Rush started burgling at 15. He joined forces with a street-kid, skipped school and started breaking into nearby houses.

He and his mate would wander through neighbourhoods, kicking a ball. If they saw a house that looked as if no one was home, they'd kick the ball over the fence, then knock on the door.

Most houses are easy to break into, Rush says. Insecure windows or sliding doors can often be found. Or, if houses are securely locked, you can jemmy windows from their frames. "Easy. A screwdriver is magic. You start from the edges and flip it out."

Dogs aren't usually a problem. They make a lot of noise when you first enter a property, but once you're inside the house, they quiet down, Rush says.

Burglar alarms are also easy to fool. "You can creep them. You just crawl. You just go close to the ground and once you get to a room you close the door. Sometimes, at the end of it, when everything's outside you suddenly stand up and woo-oo [it goes off], and then you're over the fence and gone."

After burgling a property, Rush would stash the stolen goods in parks or at the back of properties until he could find buyers. Selling and distributing the goods was never a problem. Rush made a lot of useful connections at high school and somehow he always knew who to talk to.

"Once you're on detention, it starts off from there. You know this person and that person knows another person ... "

Rush left school without passing any subjects except design technology. He's a practical guy, he says. He liked design technology because he could use the school's equipment to cut metal devices for jemmying open locks on cars to be stolen.

Looking back, Rush estimates he made about $2000 to $3000 a week from burglary. "And that's all spent drinking and having fun, and chicks and bringing them home ...

"It was like a job at that time. After you finished a burglary and you had the money, you were just happy, and that's the moment you were always looking for. I think I was addicted or something."

Rush is the only one in his family with a criminal lifestyle. His brother and sisters all have jobs and his mother has even dobbed him in to the police after finding stolen jewellery in his bedroom.

He can't explain why he is different to the rest of his family. "I was always the naughty kid. I was always making kids cry and stuff. It was just my mouth talking.

"I think I was a daredevil. I liked to push the number. The cops chasing you and all that - that's big adrenalin, bro."

Today, though, Rush says he has given up burgling, working casually as a printer instead. The police enrolled him in the Mynd programme for youth offenders and he spent two weeks at Waiouru Army Base. Now, he hopes to join the Army.

It's not that Rush has changed his mind about the morality of burglary. Rather, he says his mind has been opened to more lucrative possibilities elsewhere.

"I look at the people who are still burgling and they have nothing to show at their house. They have no TV and all the stuff is not theirs. I don't want to be like that. I want to be pimping it: have a TV and a big-arse house and a couple of chicks walking around wearing nothing."