Judge tells man: ‘sort it out, OK?’

"You don't want to turn 37 and all you have done is see the inside of a jail cell." Judge Lance Rowe

A 27-year-old caught with methamphetamine, knives and drug scales in a department store is at a cross roads.

The man should pay heed to the past 10 years of his life if he wants to make the next decade better, a judge says.

Tristan Abraham’s dealings with authorities include having a police dog take a bite of his leg and throwing a cup of Milo at officers who made him take off his underwear when searching him for drugs.

He was in the Palmerston North District Court on Tuesday after another incident with police.

Staff in Kmart’s Palmerston North store noticed him behaving suspiciously on January 26 and he became agitated when approached.

Police were called and Abraham was arrested.

They found a hammer down his pants, a pocket knife in his trouser pocket and a meat cleaver in his jacket.

He also had glass pipes for smoking drugs, zip-lock bags, scales typically used for measuring drugs and less than a gram of methamphetamine on him.

Defence lawyer Daniel Flinn said Abraham could not really explain what was going on, but admitted to being on methamphetamine at the time.

Abraham told Judge Lance Rowe he wanted to sort out his drug problem, to which the judge replied: ‘‘Have you heard the expression ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink?’.

‘‘The combination of items in your possession and the amount of methamphetamine that you had, and the bags and weapons, would cause the court to be pretty suspicious about what you are doing... when you have convictions for dealing drugs. ‘‘We are not silly, Mr Abraham.’’ The judge said Abraham had started making positive changes recently.

‘‘You don’t want to turn 37 and all you have done is see the inside of a jail cell. ‘‘Sort it out, OK?’’ Abraham was sentenced to six months’ supervision and 80 hours’ community work.