A woman who stole a ceramic owl from someone's letterbox smashed it on the ground when police confronted her.
Emily Jane Frater was with her adult daughter on October 14 when she swiped the courier package from the letterbox, which a neighbour saw her doing.
When approached by police, shethrew the package on the ground, breaking it, and became abusive towards the officers, kicking out at them.
On October 20 she was at it again, taking three pairs of pants into the changing rooms at Best for Less and ripping off the security tags. On October 25, Frater was in Mitre 10 Mega and snatched a smoke alarm and thermal heat detector, hiding them in her bag while paying for other items at the counter.
Frater set off the alarms as she walked out of the store, so returned inside and gave security her bag. As she was leaving again, the alarms went off once more.
She said she had full hands while she was shopping so put the alarms in her pockets and forgot about them. Defence lawyer Jamie Waugh said Frater, a sickness beneficiary, was "amassing a bit of a history in recent years for dishonesty offending". Judge Dugald Matheson warned Frater about the path she was heading down.
"The danger is if you keep doing this sort of thing you will end up down in Arohata, [women's prison] because that's what happens," he said.
Frater pleaded guilty to theft, wilful damage, resisting police and two counts of shoplifting.
