A magistrate has sentenced a chronic repeat offender for three and a half years in prison, for several brazen criminal actions, including getting drunk inside a bar he and another burglar had broken into.
Magistrate Angelyn Hernandez handed down several sentences in relation to the various crimes for which Kurtney Johnson, 49, was appearing before the Summary Court on Monday, and accused him of considering his offences “a joke”.
Those latest offences included two counts of theft, criminal trespass, attempted theft, possession of a utensil used in the consumption of cocaine, tampering with an electronic monitoring device, and failing to surrender to custody.
‘Unenviable record’
Hernandez noted that Johnson had spent “the majority of his adult life before the courts and has an unenviable record, with the majority being offences against the public – theft, burglary and robbery”.
Prior to appearance in court Monday, his most recent previous conviction had been in January 2021, for attempted burglary, for which he had been sentenced to two years in prison, with one year suspended for two years.
A social inquiry report prepared for the court described Johnson as a “career offender” of some 30 years.
The latest charges against him were in relation to crimes that his defence counsel had described as “petty” and “opportunistic”, Hernandez said.
‘Pissed out of their face’
One of the offences involved a break-in at Silverside bar and restaurant on the George Town waterfront in May this year, “where the defendant and his co-accused were seen on CCTV drinking away and absolutely, by their own words, ‘pissed out of their face'”.
She noted that they were so drunk, the co-accused “had dropped his ID at the scene”.
The magistrate added, “There was no attempt to hide their identity at all. And then you start wondering, does this become a joke?”
She told Johnson, who appeared via video link from Northward Prison, that she did not believe he was serious about changing his criminal ways.
The court had heard of other crimes committed by Johnson in his latest bouts of offending, including stealing items from a car parked outside the George Town Hospital. He was caught on CCTV breaking into the car.
Hernandez noted that when he was taken into custody the next day on an unrelated matter, he was “brazenly” wearing the same shoes and hat from the day before. “Again, it’s almost like a joke,” she said.
In another incident, in August 2023, after getting into a car he did not own, he was found sleeping inside it, wearing two pairs of sunglasses belonging to the owner and in possession of a crack pipe.
While on bail, he stole a generator from a locked vehicle, and later, while again on bail, he removed his electronic monitor, and when police caught up with him, found him again with a crack pipe.
After listing his latest litany of crimes and telling Johnson he was “getting too old for this”, Hernandez said, “There is nothing but custody in this matter.”
She handed down various sentences, some to be served concurrently and some consecutively, for a total of 172 weeks, or three and a half years in jail, with time already served in custody to be discounted.
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