granted bail<\/a>, she didn\u2019t bother going back to court.<\/p>\nInstead, on March 19, she went to Hamilton\u2019s Super Cheap Auto on Mill St, in a vehicle with false plates. <\/p>\n
She entered the store with another person and was spotted by staff removing the packaging from car seat covers.<\/p>\n
They were approached by staff, and had the seat covers and a tyre iron taken off them and asked to leave.<\/p>\n
As she approached the door, she grabbed a socket set. A staff member said, \u201cDon\u2019t do it\u201d, but she did, and walked out, being followed by the staff member.<\/p>\n
Dickson then half turned and brandished the knife at them while mumbling something.<\/p>\n
Then, nearly three hours later, Dickson and a co-defendant went to the Chemist Warehouse and stole fragrances before she pulled out the knife again.<\/p>\n
When caught by police, she admitted the offences. <\/p>\n
\u2018Driven by addiction\u2019<\/p>\n
Judge Crayton said her offending was exacerbated by the use of the knife, \u201cwhich potentially can have extremely serious, occasionally fatal, consequences if used\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dickson also targeted a retail outlet and stole items which could then be used to trade for money or drugs.<\/p>\n
He took an overall starting point of five years\u2019 jail, before allowing discounts for her guilty pleas and personal circumstances, including her mental health state and abuse of substances.<\/p>\n
\u201c[They are] offences which strike me as being particularly desperate offences committed in a relatively haphazard way for small monetary gain, but at huge risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth to your liberty but also to the personal safety and wellbeing of your victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey cover all the hallmarks of offending committed by someone driven by addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then accepted her \u201cextremely difficult background\u201d of trauma in her adolescence and early adulthood and \u201cunsurprising use of alcohol and drugs\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dickson was jailed for three years.<\/p>\n
Judge Crayton declined to order any reparation as Dickson had no means to pay.<\/p>\n
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 11 years and has been a journalist for 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Don\u2019t do it\u2019 Dickson\u2019s first theft of $46 was at the Warehouse on January 9 last year, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[135517,74,18316,104252,169161,3401,169162,6288,61094,111,43,139,69,1551,4733,116271,4744],"class_list":["post-310566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-addicted","tag-after","tag-anne","tag-brandishes","tag-dickson","tag-drug","tag-fragrances","tag-hamilton","tag-knife","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-set","tag-shoplifter","tag-socket","tag-stealing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}