Liquor-store lifting nets seven-month sentence as message to others: Judge

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This article was published 07/01/2019 (2628 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man who walked into numerous Winnipeg Liquor Marts and brazenly left without paying for bottles of alcohol has been sentenced to a total of seven months in jail.

Dan Taylor, 37, who had been in custody waiting for his sentencing for three months, will spend four more months in jail.

Provincial court Judge Kusham Sharma told Taylor she realizes he is an alcoholic, and when he is home in St. Theresa Point, he is fine because it is a dry reserve and he is with family. However, she said, she had to send a message to others targeting liquor stores.

“There does need to be a message sent for deterrence and denunciation of these (crimes),” Sharma said during sentencing Monday. “They are so rampant… incarceration isn’t always the answer, but sometimes it is all we can do.”

In September, Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corp. made public statistics showing thieves had taken about $800,000 worth of liquor from its stores over the course of the 12 months previous, while also confirming it had ordered its security guards not to stop any suspected perpetrators.

The union for Liquor Mart workers has since suggested the safest way of dealing with thieves may be to go back to the system where customers had to go to an employee at a counter, order booze, and have the product brought to them from a secure area.

Court was told Taylor first got into trouble two years ago, when a forest fire forced the evacuation of St. Theresa Point, located some 470 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

He has since been banned from travelling to Winnipeg from the fly-in reserve except for emergency or medical treatment.

Taylor was in Winnipeg for a medical appointment last year, and missed his flight back. Soon after, he began walking out of local liquor stores without paying for the product. On one day, he stole from two liquor stores in an hour.

Court was told nobody was hurt during the robberies, but during one theft, a visibly intoxicated Taylor told a manager “I’ll punch your face,” before walking out with a $13 bottle of vodka.

Defence counsel John Corona said Taylor’s parents were alcoholics, and he has been excessively drinking for years.

Corona said Taylor wasn’t selling the bottles, but simply drank them himself.

“These weren’t offences for gain but because he has an illness,” Corona said. “He has a serious untreated substance-abuse issue.”

When Taylor was asked Monday by Sharma what he does when he comes into the city, the man responded: “Just drink.”

“It is a pretty dry reserve, (but) in the city, alcohol is about on every corner.”

Sharma told Taylor it might be better for him to come to the city in future with a responsible adult to make sure he gets back home without getting into trouble.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca