Judge decries rise in ‘drunken thuggery’

Press, 14 October 1986, Page 15

Judge decries rise in ‘drunken thuggery’

PA Auckland Too many young people — "regrettably many in the Pacific Islands community” — are causing an upsurge in drunken thuggery, a High Court judge said recently. Mr Justice Speight made the comment in passing sentence in the’ High Court at Auckland. He was sentencing Soane Tony Kaitapu, aged 34, a freezing worker of Feilding, to 2>/ 2 years jail after he was found guilty of a charge of injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The charge had been amended from one of murder.

The Judge was also sitting in the trial of five Samoan men accused of the murder of two others in a tavern carpark. “There are many young people, and regrettably, many in the Pacific Island community, who present a friendly face to the com-, munity when sober,” said Mr Justic Speight.

"They are pleasant, law-abiding and co-opera-tive, but many of them, together with their white brothers, when in liquor can go berserk at trifling provocations.” Departures from the standards the community expected were a grave social problem today, he said. “It is one of the main causes of the extremes of violence now prevalent in the streets at a level that would have been unthinkable years ago,” said the Judge. The community demanded some standards of deterrent punishment

be set, unless it was thought violence could become the norm.

“To put it perfectly bluntly, the courts are facing an upsurge of drunken thuggery.”

The “Auckland Star” said that neither the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, Mr Prebble, nor the Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer, would comment before seeing the Judge’s comments and looking into the case. A spokesman for the Justice Department said the Minister did not usually comment on individual cases or judges’ comments.