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Andy Jackson / Stuff
An off-duty police officer offered drugs at a bar to a random stranger.
A police officer has been discharged without conviction by a judge for the second time, this time for drug-related offenses.
Richard James Gibson received his first fatality in 2017 for dangerous driving after a police chase on Wellington’s pedestrian-filled boardwalk. This time it was to supply a class b drug.
He is suspended from the police, but has now resigned after a second offense.
Wellington District Court Judge Chris Tuohy granted the second release but said the name would not be removed.
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The Crown opposed the request for discharge.
Gibson had been seen by another off-duty cop offering ecstasy to someone in a Wellington bar bathroom in August of last year.
His attorney Letizea Ord said that between 2016 and 2019 Gibson’s life had spiraled out of control.
He started using drugs to cope with the pressures on him.
“He is described as having a matrix of stressors,” Ord said.
“He had lost his moral compass to drugs.”
Now he had regained control of his life, but he was still going to suffer the consequences of his actions, he said.
Judge Tuohy said that removing his occupation and name at that time would not be in the interest of justice for several reasons, including that the public had a right to know that he was a serving police officer of some rank and that the deletion of name would cast suspicion on other officers. .
He said Gibson’s entire work life had been with the police and that he had risen to the rank of detective sergeant at the age of 27. He had been in charge of several important investigations.
The judge said the high workload, the breakdown of a second marriage, a friend who was shot and the loss of his grandparents, all combined with the loss of his moral balance.
“It was deliberate recklessness to give the drug to a person in a bar, the person a random stranger in sight and as it turned out in the sight of another off duty.”
He said Gibson needed to find a new career by starting from scratch and that a conviction would have to be revealed.
Losing the name suppression would publicly mark Gibson in the same way that a conviction would.
The judge fired Gibson and ordered him to pay $ 2,500 to a drug rehab charity.
