Police tape: it’s the universal symbol that screams ‘do not cross’ to all those who encounter it.
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Everyone but Jonathan O’Hara, that is.
It was a Sunday afternoon in March when O’Hara was greeted by the ominous blue and white binding as it flapped in the breeze outside his Corrimal Street unit block.
On the other side was a host of police men and women, combing the complex’s front driveway and carpark metre by metre hoping to discover clues as to the perpetrator of a grisly axe attack that had occurred just a few hours earlier.
The tape had been set up to stop people entering the area and potentially contaminating the scene.
But a boozed-up O’Hara decided he was having none of it.
In the company of two friends, one carrying a case of Tooheys Extra Dry, O’Hara grabbed at the police tape with one hand – his other holding a beer – and walked underneath it, into the active crime scene.
You can’t come in here, you have to leave, a police officer told him, prompting O’Hara to shoot back “I don’t give a f—k, I live here”.
A second request for him to leave the scene was greeted with a similar response.
Officers then took hold of O’Hara intending to escort him outside the tape perimeter, however O’Hara pulled away and began to walk off. He was quickly put on the ground by police, who would later describe his attitude as “overly cocky”.
O’Hara eventually calmed down and was allowed to return to his unit block, however police charged him with resisting arrest and not complying with a police request relating to a crime scene.
He pleaded guilty to both charges in court on Tuesday and will face sentencing on June 6.