When news broke that the police have arrested “Sticker Lady” and that she maybe charged under the Vandalism to Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance), my first reaction was outrage. The reason for that outrage was that the maximum sentence is 3 years. Even though she may not be given the maximum sentence, I would have considered a 6-month sentence excessive. After all, a scumbag like Mingyi was only sentenced to 8 months and served only 6 months in jail. It is not the amount of funds that was misappropriated that is the issue, but rather the fact that what he did (along with Durai in the NKF case) caused a collapse in confidence in all charity organisations. The end result is that the charities will find it harder to raise money to help those people in need. I personally find that way more heinous than what “Sticker Lady”did.
As far as I am concerned, those stickers are actually witty, funny and pretty harmless. At most I would consider it a minor nuisance much like those advertisements for tuition, locksmith and plumbing services, or someone’s lost dog etc found at lift lobbies, overhead bridges, bus stops and even on the bezel of my door bell button. To be frank, I find brochures from property agents that regularly gets ‘planted’ onto my steel gate a even greater nuisance. If the police took action against “Sticker Lady” because of these stickers, then I expect them to step up their enforcement efforts on the other examples I have mentioned above as well. That’s not forgetting the loan shark runners which are still at large.
That said, it doesn’t mean I am completely opposed to charging her for the offense. After all it is not just about the stickers. “Sticker Lady” has also painted on roads and that’s whole a different level entirely. If we were to let her go unscathed, it may give loan shark runners ideas or even encourage copycat vandals to do the same in other parts of Singapore. We should not forget the amount of effort required to clean up her handiwork as well. At Maxwell Road, part of road surface has been scraped off and it probably needs to be repaved in the near future. From the two photos, I noticed that this stretch of road may actually have been repaved not long ago since the side away from the Ministry of National Development is actually darker. In other words, public money will be wasted to clean up “Sticker Lady’s” little prank.
In short, she would have to face the charges and accept whatever the judge dish out even though I remain opposed to an excessive jail term. I personally don’t expect her to get a jail term any more than Oliver Fricker, the Swiss national who broke into the Changi Depot and spray an SMRT train with graffiti. But then again it might actually depend on whether the judge had a good breakfast that day.
Even so, I wouldn’t sign any of the petitions though I believe it is necessary to review the penalties for such offenses. The reason being that it isn’t just this particular law that needs to be reviewed. In my opinion, the penalties for a lot of “white collar” or “brain crimes” are too mild. There is certainly a disparity between those and “blue collar crimes” which often involve physical violence. Mingyi’s case was just one example, and i shuddered when I compared his 8 months jail term to the maid who was sentenced to 3 years in jail for having sex with an underage boy.
In other words, if a person commit fraud and that fraud resulted in the suicide of another person, he is only charged for fraud and a judge may be lenient on him if it is his first offense or simply because he could afford a good lawyer to defend him. While I am not suggesting that the fraudster be charged for murder, I would have expected a stiffer punishment for what he did. Basically, it is not all about the money he has defrauded but also the “collateral damage” that is done. In which case, the same goes for “Sticker Lady”.
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