Cooper and his partner, Rebecca Worthington, were both intoxicated when police arrived at their home on Phethean Street, Farnworth, at 10am on June 11. Cooper climbed into the attic and on to the roof of the house before walking across the rooftops to the end of the street towards Cawdor Street.
During the incident he threw roof-tiles, damaging police cars and other vehicles and made various threats before he climbed down. Cooper told one office he had covid-19 and blew in his face twice.
He was on bail at the time of the incident as, two months earlier, on April 26, he was driving a VW Golf at 4.43am on George Street, Farnworth and refused to stop for police. During a seven-minute chase he drove at speeds of up to 65 mph in residential streets and through a red traffic light before he and his passengers abandoned the car in Hacken Bridge Road, Bolton.
He was found hiding in brambles a short distance away and had drunk more than double the legal level of alcohol for driving.
Surely with a record like that he won't be walking free?
...at a sentencing hearing at Bolton Crown Court, the Honorary Recorder of Bolton, Judge Martin Walsh, said he was willing to give the 29-year-old a chance and imposed a two-year suspended sentence.
Oh. Well, let's hope next time he's speeding drunk and goes through a red light, the idiot magistrate is going the other way...
Rebecca Filletta, defending, said a psychiatric assessment revealed Cooper had a lower-than-average IQ and a mistrust of authority figures.
She said he had been an inmate since June and had “not coped well in custody” where he had been bullied and assaulted.
Good! At least someone's handing out some punishment.
4 comments:
To be fair, half the population have a lower than average IQ. Some really dim people can be honest, trustworthy, brave, civilized and all the rest of it.
It's like saying that poverty breeds crime. No it doesn't. At the beginning of the last century there were plenty of honest, upright, brave, skilful, hardworking poor people.
The problem is that crime breeds poverty. The hard work it takes to buy a car that some car thief makes off in and wrecks. The cost on everybody else's insurance. The price of goods in shops to cover shoplifting.
The punishment via prison is another thing that makes the rest of us poorer.
The cheap forms of punishment: public whipping or hanging have been abandoned, because most politicians are criminals at heart, and don't mind impoverishing the rest of us.
I sometimes cringe when I think about what an immature jerk I was until I was well into my thirties when I finally grew up. Reading about this guy makes me feel better.
"The problem is that crime breeds poverty. The hard work it takes to buy a car that some car thief makes off in and wrecks. The cost on everybody else's insurance. The price of goods in shops to cover shoplifting."
But if prison isn't the answer, and we can't use the stocks, what's left?
"Reading about this guy makes me feel better."
Indeed! It's a modern day morality play, played out in our courts daily.
Julia, I think you know the answer to your own question.
Reintroducing stocks, pillory and other forms of public humiliation would have a deterrent effect on others who might want to commit the same sort of crime. With the slightest excuse courts and newspapers allow offenders to remain anonymous. When pictures of offenders caught in the act all too often their faces are masked out so we can’t see who they are. The law-abiding majority should be told who the criminals are in their community.
Dissuading others from committing similar crimes is one of the main purposes of sentencing, we forgot that 50 years ago when, as a society, we chose to try to rehabilitate instead of punish. That policy evolved to the point where we don’t seek to punish, we can’t rehabilitate and the whole justice system is a failed deterrent.
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