Most shoplifters who come before Justice G.A. Rice were nabbed with $50 or so worth of food.
The fact that the last name sounds like a pantry staple is coincidental, but as the Alberta Court of Justice in St. Albert heard Monday, Sept. 9, there was nothing accidental about Nicole Green and a co-accused walking out of a hardware retailer with $1,853 worth of power tools.
Appearing via CCTV from the Edmonton Remand Centre, Green, 33, admitted to the crime. Before Rice hammered her for 30 days in jail for the heavy-duty theft, court heard she and her partner in crime entered the St. Albert store from different doors, met up inside and after collecting the valuable items and placing them in a cart, avoided an employee who asked to see their receipt at the entrance and left together.
Investigators recognized Green, who has been convicted of theft seven times since 2017.
Rice noted the $1,853 value was on the extreme high end for a shoplifting charge.
“A lot of the shoplifting we see is people taking $50 in groceries,” he said, musing the booty was more likely to be fenced to feed an addiction, and whether shoplifting was a serious enough charge to fit the crime. “The gravity of the offence is pretty high.”
Rice agreed the joint submission of a 30-day sentence was appropriate since previous shorter sentences had no deterring effect.
According to her Gladue report, both of Green’s grandparents attended residential school. She does not know her father and her mother is a “severe” addict. She is a mother of three; the death of their father by overdose had a “profound effect” on her, according to defence counsel David Phillips.
“I take responsibility for my actions,” a teary Green said. “I want to go back to my babies. He’s never been away from me so this is a lot.”
Green has already served her sentence for this offence. At the time of her appearance, she had been in custody 46 days, giving her 69 days’ credit.
