A former police officer will spend up to 10 years behind bars for stealing $100,000 in cash from a convicted sex offender during a New South Wales home invasion.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old former senior constable, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to aggravated break and enter and committing a serious indictable offence over the 2024 incident.<\/p>\n
In October last year the defendant travelled more than 700 kilometres from the NSW South Coast to Lightning Ridge, in the state’s west.<\/p>\n
The Coonamble District Court heard he tied up a then-78-year-old man, injuring the victim’s hands and legs, before stealing $100,000 in cash.<\/p>\n
He learnt about the large sum of money while investigating the man as a suspect in a different matter.<\/p>\n
The offender, who was referred to by the pseudonym MA, was sentenced to 10 years’ jail with a non-parole period of six years.<\/p>\n
MA put his head in his hands as Judge Robert Newlinds read out the sentence.<\/p>\n
Judge Newlinds told the court he considered MA’s exploitation of knowledge he gained as a police officer a serious offence.<\/p>\n
“The message is, the misuse of this information is wholly unacceptable,” he said.<\/p>\n
“As a serving police officer he must have known just how morally wrong his conduct was.”<\/p>\n
Judge Newlinds said MA was likely to “suffer greatly in custody”.<\/p>\n
The judge read a statement from MA’s parents speaking of their deep remorse for their son’s crime.<\/p>\n
“The pain and fear he would have caused the victim has been weighing heavily on him,” his mother said in her statement.<\/p>\n
Judge Newlinds acknowledged MA’s PTSD diagnosis, but said it not did not fully explain why he committed the crime.<\/p>\n
The court was told MA’s PTSD first manifested four years ago as the result of events he witnessed in the line of duty, including murders, suicides and the death of a baby.<\/p>\n
MA said he resorted to gambling and regularly consuming 20 to 25 standard drinks daily.<\/p>\n
While the judge acknowledged the state of MA’s mental health, he described the connection between the PTSD diagnosis and the crime as ‘”tenuous”.<\/p>\n
The judge ordered MA to return the $81,000, which has been recovered, to the victim.<\/p>\n
MA will have to repay to remaining $19,000 through the sale of property.<\/p>\n
The court heard another man is before the courts over the incident.<\/p>\n
If he is found guilty, MA can then claim a part of the money back, the court heard.<\/p>\n
The co-accused has yet to enter a plea in the matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former police officer will spend up to 10 years behind bars for stealing $100,000 in cash from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[156454,43,19445,156451,44,156452,156453,156450,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-268320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-coonamble-district-court","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-home-invasion","11":"tag-lightning-ridge-home-invasion","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-nsw-cop-home-invasion","14":"tag-nsw-cop-jailed","15":"tag-police-crime","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}