From Canberra Times (our local newspaper):
03 May 2008 - 9:44AM
A thief confesses: 'You're looking for a house that's nice and tidy, looks like it's got money'
By Noel Towell Police Reporter
He won't show his face or allow his real name to be published, but if you are among the legion of ACT burglary victims, it's just possible that he robbed your house.If not him, then someone very like him, because all that distinguishes Plucker, as he is known in family circles, from your average Canberra housebreaker is that he started a little younger than most and was probably more prolific.
Plucker is only his late 20s, but he already has a 12-year burglary career behind him with his offending between 1992 and 2004 interrupted only by the stretches in juvenile detention and jail his crimes earned him.
Research by The Canberra Times shows homes in the capital are more likely to be targeted by burglars than in any other east coast capital city.
Despite a steady decrease in the rate of residential break-and-enters during the past five years, in line with a national trend, there were nearly 2800 burglaries in the ACT last year. That's eight homes being robbed every day of the year. Last year, there were 2122 burglaries for every 100,000 households in the ACT, more than in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Darwin.
Our homes are robbed mostly by young men like Plucker.
"I was 13 when I did my first job, my last lag [jail sentence] was 2004 and I finished it in 2006," he said.
Despite being responsible for "hundreds" of burglaries, Plucker's first break-and-enter is still fresh in his mind.
"It was 1992 or 1993, and the house was in Narrabundah. I was with my brother, he was heavily into a lot of shit, so I just, sort of, tagged along," he said.
"I still remember the feeling. I felt nervous but excited, hate to say it now, but it's a mad rush you get and yet you still had butterflies.
"But when it was all over and done with and I had money in my pocket, that was the end of it for me and ever since then I never looked back."
For an indigenous teenager from a family riven by drugs and alcohol, having cash in his pocket for the first time was intoxicating and he was hooked.
"Yeah, hooked badly, although I wish now that it never happened."
After a few months, he didn't need to tag along with anyone, he knew what to do.
Narrabundah, scene of that first job, is not far from the south Canberra suburb where he grew up, but his thieving would soon take him far and wide through the capital's suburbs throughout his teens and young adulthood.
"Going out on an earn." That's what he and his co-ees (co-offenders) called it and very little would get between them and a household's consumer goods easy to dispose of, hard to trace the burglar's perennial favourite target.
The target houses were chosen for their neat and tidy appearance and before lunch, seven days a week, was when they were most vulnerable. "Usually the mornings are best, less people around, but we'd go all week, any day, you name it.
"You're looking for a house that's nice and tidy, it looks like it's got money.
"Walk down the street, casually, and spot one out and say, there's one, that's the go.
"Knock on the door and see if anyone is home and if no one's home it's 'yeah'."
In those days, Canberra home-owners didn't make it hard for these low-tech criminals many still don't and most times Plucker and his co-ees didn't even have to break a window, jemmy a door or force a lock.
"Usually, you'd go through a window, but if everything was locked we'd have to smash a window or go through the back door, usually use a screwdriver on the back door."
The traditional household deterrents have mixed results, Plucker says, against a determined group of burglars, especially when they needed to get high.
Alarms? "Nah, alarms bothered us because they attract attention, so you'd try to stay away."
Dogs? "Sometimes. If they're too big, you walk away. But a lot of the time if you're friendly to 'em, you can get around a dog."
A matter of minutes was all it usually took to turn a victim's life upside down.
"The longest you'd spend in a house is five minutes, you've got to be quick," he said.
"You get in and usually one person goes to the bedroom, another goes to the other bedroom, you suss what's in the lounge room, pick up what you got and grab it on the way out the door."
The gear was then removed in a stolen car and disposed of quickly, always sold to stolen goods middlemen fences who would deal with a number of different groups of thieves, or exchanged directly for weed, and later on in Plucker's career, heroin.
"It was always fences or dealers," he said
"My dealer would usually buy everything from me, either exchange it for pot or for money.
"You'd usually see a few different people running in and out of their places too, because Canberra is a small place and everyone knows everyone."
Then it was time to get rid of the vehicle. "We didn't burn 'em, we'd just dump them and leave them there, the coppers would find it in a couple of days."
Plucker says he doesn't know what would become of the goods after he sold them. "As soon as it goes out of my hands, I don't care, as long as I've got my fix, it doesn't matter to me."
And the price? "About one-third of the proper cost."
At first the money went on weed, and not just for himself.
"I got to the stage where I was smoking a lot of weed and hanging with the wrong crowd, me mum and dad were pretty bad weed-heads too, and alcoholics," he said.
"They never disciplined me, only put a smile on their faces and asked for money, money, money."
That's a lot of money, a lot of weed and a lot of houses burgled.
"Probably hundreds, all up I've lost count" he said. "But I'd probably do about four houses a day, I was out of control and I just didn't care."
Getting caught was always a possibility, but never one that influenced Plucker's behaviour much. Although he never believed he was untouchable, the cash and the drugs were real, jail was a remote possibility.
"It was in the back of my mind all the time but at that time, I just didn't care. I was always wondering if this was going to come back at me, but it was the cash, always the cash.
"Sometimes you'd bump into another crew when you were out, but it was never a tense moment.
"Nah, it was always bragging about what they'd got, what houses they'd broken into and how much money they had."
A kid breaking into four houses in one day was always going to attract police attention and Plucker soon found himself charged with nearly 160 burglaries after being linked to the houses with fingerprint evidence it was before he took to wearing gloves.
Although most of those charges were eventually dropped, of course he did time over that one. He was 14 years old.
"My first taste was at 14 when I got got three months in NSW, then they extradited me back here and put me in Quamby.
"It's not a holiday camp, it's pretty harsh, but the worse thing about it is they took my freedom away from me." But even behind bars, there wasn't a thought for the victims of his stealing.
"I never thought about that, ever," Plucker said. "The first time I got locked up, the only one I felt sorry for was myself."
Two more stretches in juvenile detention failed to get Plucker thinking about the pain he had inflicted on the householders he robbed.
He says he never even considered his crimes to have victims, just that there was stuff there to take, to convert into ready cash.
He only started to think about the damage he had done when he was in the adult justice system.
"I think it was when I first went to Goulburn, to the big boy place, when I walked through those gates, that's when I started thinking," he said.
There were several factors in his decision to change his life, not least being shot while caught in the act.
"I was just about to boot the back door open, next thing the door flew open, this fella came out with a gun and I turned and ran. He shouted after me, 'You better run, you black bastard,' and shot me."
A .22 slug still embedded in his back, not far from his spine, made Plucker consider that he might have ridden his luck too far.
But in the end, break-and-enter in this town is a young man's game and maybe, like most of our burglars, he just grew out of it.
So there!
**********
Where did the weekend go?
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