A WARRNAMBOOL Koori Court elder yesterday claimed a man found with an illegal firearm in his bedroom shouldn’t be sent to jail because he was an uneducated black man and didn’t know about white man’s laws.
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Denise Lovett made the comments in the Koori division of the Warrnambool Magistrates Court yesterday after Donald John Chatfield, 29, of Bushfield, pleaded guilty to firearm offences.
He was jailed for six months, with the sentence suspended for 12 months.
Chatfield, who has an extensive criminal history involving assaults, pleaded guilty to being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, failing to secure a firearm and possessing the proceeds of crime.
Ms Lovett said there were already far too many black men in jail and Chatfield was uneducated and did not know the white man’s rules. She said she was certain most Aboriginal men did not know the law in relation to firearms.
Fellow elder Lenny Clarke said Chatfield was a changed man and it was a pity that a “damn weapon” had been found in his bedroom.
Police told the court that on June 4 this year officers attended Chatfield’s home in Bushfield, where he lives with his mother, to serve an intervention order.
Chatfield was not home at the time. Police had received information Chatfield had a firearm and a search uncovered the lever-action Winchester rifle in his bedroom.
Chatfield went to the Warrnambool police station the next day and told officers in an interview the rifle did not belong to him, but declined to name the owner.
He admitted he did not have a gun licence and that he’d had the gun for about a month. He said the gun had been stored “all around” and had been moved from shed to shed.
Police said the rifle, described as an “operational weapon”, had been stolen from a country property late last year and efforts had been made to file off the serial number.
Defence counsel Andrew Hale said it was a serious charge but his client didn’t know how the rifle came to be on his property and there was no ammunition for the gun.
He described the Winchester rifle as something likely to be seen in an old western movie and was more like a toy than a working gun.
He said Chatfield had no intention to fire the weapon.
Mr Hale said Chatfield had a disadvantaged and troubled upbringing, had recently split with the mother of his two young children and spent Wednesday digging the grave for his stepfather.
Magistrate Peter Mellas said the case was all about protection of the community and the maximum penalty for being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm was 10 years’ imprisonment.