German ex-pat jailed for smearing own pat all over Cork apartment An ex-pat German Apple worker who stored three month’s worth of his own excrement and urine in his luxury apartment has been given a year's worth of porridge by an Irish court. Robert Kummer, 37, sparked a major public health scare after Gardai initially visited the apartment following a neighbour’s complaints about a foul …
There is a simple explanation for this - he was getting ready for secret product testing for the new iCrap. As a part of the rigorous testing we would expect from an Apple product he was building up stock of the feeder ingredients required for prolonged user acceptance testing.
Look at the poor bugger whose electricity bill skyrocketed with the 3x daily recharges he was expected to do to test the Apple Watch - you don't mention him, do you? And what about the guy who turned green after carrying around miniature nuclear reactor (iNuke) required to keep his watch topped up?
It would be ridiculous if he actually ends up in jail. He's obviously got a serious mental illness.
I can see people wanting to see "justice" in the form of jail time for someone who commits a violent crime when the defense presses for time in a mental institution. Maybe Ireland's penal system is able to provide effective mental care? If not, he's just going to do it again once he's released. They might have him on probation and require someone to visit his residence regularly, but once that's off he'd probably go back to his old habits.
Most of us, when depressed, would likely take to the bottle. Whisky is a stalwart companion of depression, something we are given ample examples of in noir films.
But now and again, you get a behavior that skews from the norm, like this. Psychologically it must be quite intriguing.
I'm sure the landlord would have preferred whisky, though.
wonder if insurance will cover "ripping up all the floorboards because they've been marinading in shit for a year."
A good loss adjuster will have those floorboards put on Ebay in minutes. And I'll wager he'd get a good price for them from scat fans.
"A good loss adjuster will have those floorboards put on Ebay in minutes"
Luxury stained wood flooring. Well seasoned, and perfect for high-end renovations. Also available, several square meters of extra-cured leather.
If that doesn't shift it, then perhaps list it for the specialty market.
It's nowhere near as bad as Merkin-land. They abolished all mental heath care in the 80s, and shortly after the prison population rose by the same amount.
This retarded policy only reflects the attitudes of the typical merkin.
The other day there was a news story about an attempted (ie failed) attack by a mentally ill person, and one merkin commented: "He should have dropped a few $100 on counselling before it got that bad".
Unbelievable. They actually expect severely mentally ill people to pay for their own treatment, and can't see why having them wandering around in society untreated is bad. Only in Merkin-land.
There are lots of mentally ill people who don't get the treatment and support that they need and end up being jailed over here too. We've never actually abolished mental health care here, just subjected it to the usual death by a thousand cuts. I gather that a lot of police time is spent dealing with this lack of care.
I thought because he was German it was a digg on Angela Merkel? But it was directed at America.
"This retarded policy only reflects the attitudes of the typical merkin."
Actually, the typical 'Merkin doesn't have a say in any shit law in any way. If I had to guess, there is no longer any TYPICAL American? Lawmakers are prevalent in every culture, they're usually sociopaths or misdirected wealthy people.
Now I'll get my coat
Whilst agreeing that any psychological issues are unlikely to be resolved by time in the slammer, this case dates back to 2013. Kummer pleaded guilty to a crime of criminal damage and was bailed to give him time to pay compensation. The incarceration is due to the fact that after two years and despite being in good employment he has only paid €800 or around €30 per month. And from reading the original article the implication is that Kummer is now in a better place mentally.
You can criticise a seemingly ridiculous sentence, what country doesn't have the odd one without resorting to xenophobic / racist comments about a while nationality!
There's an appeals process and also this case spans 2 years during which time the guy seems to have held down a good job and had ample opportunity to make payment of €15,000 compensation to pay for the damage. He was not just thrown in prison at first instance.
I don't agree with the sentence but there's also opportunity for the prison service to pass him over to a mental health service or even arrange early release.
This isn't as cut and dry as is being made out here.
Good call to all those who pointed out that this is not someone being jailed for criminal damage whilst mentally ill, but rather someone being jailed for non-payment of fine (well compensation, but a court-imposed tariff nonetheless). Surely they must have attachment of earnings or whatever it's called? If he's not paying when he's supposed to then dock his pay at source. Surely he's paying tax? (He's an Apple employee, not Apple itself so presumably can't pull the Irish tax dodge that his employers use to such effect). Perhaps he's got functional problems relating to his mental state? Can hold down a job but not capable of conducting his own affairs?
Jail seems wasteful of everyone's time and resources.
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You have to feel for the guy. I am not sure that prison is the right place for someone in such a state. Depression is very nasty, especially if you have no support network in place. Maybe some counselling and help groups would have been more appropriate than 12 months in the slammer.
Not a pleasant clean-up job though. Hazmat suits all round I think.
The judge may have described the case thus, but that may be because the judge is more used to dealing with criminals than with the mentally ill. Storing faeces and urine is a fairly normal pattern of behaviour for certain mental illnesses. I've heard of several similar cases. But I've not heard of the victims being sent to prison for it before.
"A psychiatrist...speculated the German man might have been suffering from depressive episodes"
If he is speculating rather than offering a professional opinion, that suggests he isn't the court appointed psychiatrist or an expert witness and hasn't met the man. The DPP wouldn't prosecute if he didn't pass an examination for fitness to stand trial and any defence counsel would produce evidence of mental illness if any was found by expert witnesses.
I came directly to the comments to complain about the shameless clickbait in the byline."What the fsck does it matter if he was an Apple employee?" I thought, incensed. "Damn you Reg" -I ranted on- "we all hate Apple, but that doesn't mean you have to smear it (tehe!) in this business"
And then I got to the last line, and was hit in the head by that demolishing joke.
Well played, mr. Fay, well played.
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This chap is 37 - born around the time of the Dirty Protest in 1978, where excrement was smeared on the walls. Was he trying to recreate something from the year of his birth?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_protest
note: apparently the smearing on the walls was to make the stuff dry quicker, and thereby reducing the smell
I'm a local and I find that sentence absolutely bizzare - you wouldn't get it for serious assault.
The guy obviously has some major problems. I think the coverage borders on mockery and is borderline abusive of someone who is obviously unwell. The fact that he's an Apple employee is totally irrelevant. Thousands of people work for Apple in Cork.
Irish Courts actually often have a horrendous approach to non payment of fines and compensation, which despite umpteen pieces of legislation to coerce them to use attachment to earnings, community service orders or other measures still isn't happening.
They waste huge amounts of tax payers money on putting people behind bars (often for very short periods <24h) for non payment of court ordered sums of money.
Yet if you were charged with a serious violent crime you'd probably get a pathetically lenient sentence despite having 9000 previous convictions.
The guy was initially ordered to pay €15,000 to refurbish the apartment which required a complete strip out (including the floor boards and aspects of the structure. He paid €800. This is where the sentencing came from. The court probably handed down a suspended sentence subject to him paying compensation. He failed to pay up, despite having employment so, the sentence was no longer suspended and was activated.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is reduced or even quashed entirely on appeal. There are clearly mental health issues.
Ireland is a dump anyway due to shitty egomaniacal robber politicians. Ridiculously high taxes geting nothing in exchange, ridiculously high rent, ridiculously high cost of living, ridiculously bad transport infrastructure, ridiculously low availability of anything, ridiculously awful or lack of public healthcare..
Surely if you're putting your coat on you're on the way to the Ausgang, not the Ausfahrt? It's difficult to drive while standing with your coat in front of you.
(Why doesn't English have different short words for different sorts of exit and travel?)
Re: Ausfahrt
I grew up in 18 month chunks shared between Germany and the UK. Me and my brother used to joke that the city of Ausfahrt must be huge (it's on the motorway signs that indicate an exit.)
Then, being British, we'd snigger at the -fahrt bit. Used to pass the time on the autobahns.
"Why doesn't English have different short words for different sorts of exit and travel"
I think ausfahrt is a compound word and means something like drive from or drive out or more simply exit. You could use exit ramp in English if you like. Now ausgang is something like out-going or way out. We might like to use exit instead because it is shorter. However way out is used quite a lot.
So there you go: we have "exit", "way out" and "exit ramp" (a bit too en_US for me.) For good measure I also offer you "slip road" for UK (and perhaps wider) usage.
Never underestimate English's variability. If we do actually lack a word then simply use someone else's. However, I don't think we need eingang, ausgang or ausfahrt. We are pretty well served in that area.
> Why doesn't English have different short words for different sorts of exit and travel?
English does have different verbs for different forms of travel (to walk, to ride, to fly, to ski, to sail, to swim, to hoverboard, ...), what generally speaking German does not have is a generic term for "to go", without specifying by which means. Which is a bit of a pain in the arse as an English speaker, but Germans do not seem to mind the omission.
As for different sorts of exit, claiming that modern English has commonly used specific forms depending on the mode of egress would be stretching things quite a bit!
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