COURT: Shortly after midnight on 14 August last year, you and several other people walked into an area where the police were keeping observation.
When I say walked in, you actually arrived by vehicle and alighted from the vehicle. You then walked over to a flowerbed and appeared to root around in there. On your way back to the vehicle after this, the police sprung their trap.
One of the police officers, PC6173, ran out, and obviously ran towards you, declaring his police identity. You punched him on the mouth, and one of the other men with you also punched him elsewhere on his body.
You and one of the two males, the one who had punched PC6173, then ran towards your second companion, who was fighting or struggling with other police officers. PC6173 seems to have run in the same direction, and at that stage you repeatedly kicked him in the back. At this stage, a Police Sergeant 54431 ran into the scene, whereupon you turned around and fled. The sergeant chased you, and when he caught up with you, you knocked him to the ground.
However, in the passage of time, both you and your two companions were subdued by the police. When you were searched, on your body was found a substance which, upon subsequent analysis, was found to contain 190 grammes of ketamine.
When you were cautioned at the scene, you responded that you had agreed to carry the ketamine in return for a financial reward. You also said, and this obviously is nonsense, that you had not intended to hit the police officers.
I accept the point made by your counsel that the injuries that were in fact sustained by the police officers were not serious, but that does not detract from the feature of those two offences, which is that the assaults were perpetrated in an attempt to escape apprehension, either personally or to assist one of your companions in escaping.
I note that at the time of this offence you had not yet turned 18 years old. Despite that, you had already acquired a record of five previous convictions for theft, burglary, arson and indecent assault.
You had spent time as a result of those convictions in a juvenile home and also in a rehabilitation centre. That seems to have been a waste of time, and you do not seem to have benefited from those experiences at all.
You have certainly taken a great leap in the level of your criminality from those sort of offences to trafficking in a not unsubstantial quantity of drugs. According to you, you are not a drug abuser.
As I have no doubt you have been told, there is a well‑established guideline for offences of the nature of trafficking in ketamine. The quantity in which you trafficked falls in the band between 50 and 300 grammes, which prescribes a period of imprisonment after trial of between 6 and 9 years.
The appropriate starting point in your case in respect of this quantity is 7 years and 9 months’ imprisonment.
Given the circumstances of the assaults on the two police officers, I take as a starting point after trial a period of 1 year’s imprisonment on each.
The obvious mitigation available to you is your plea of guilty, which entitles you to a one-third reduction from those starting points. There is nothing in your personal circumstances or the circumstances of the commission of these offences that entitles you to any further reduction in sentence. Your age is not a factor which entitles you to any special consideration.
Reducing those starting points by one-third results in a sentence of 5 years and 2 months’ imprisonment on Count 1, and 8 months’ imprisonment on each of Counts 2 and 3.
I recognise, of course, that these assaults were on two separate and different police officers, but common sense suggests that it was all in the heat of the moment, and it seems to me appropriate that those two sentences should be served concurrently with one another, but the sentences for the two assaults, which are separate and distinct offences, are to be served consecutively to the trafficking office, resulting in a total period of imprisonment of 5 years and 10 months.