A drunken lout threatened to bite a police dog after waving a craft knife in front of a group of children in Croxteth .
Thomas Broadhurst, 26, was spotted holding the blade in one hand and a golf club in the other in Sovereign Road on April 3 last year.
Liverpool Crown Court heard how he later approached a police officer – minus the knife – and became abusive to the dog handler.
Robert Jones, prosecuting, said: “He said ‘f*** you’ and said ‘I will bite that f***ing dog if it bites me’.”
The officer had been called to an incident outside Broadhurst’s house in nearby Regal Road at around 4pm.
Mr Jones said: “The dog began to bark and he told the defendant to back off because he was concerned not only for his safety, but also the children in the vicinity.
“The defendant was abusive to him. He suggested that he was going to attack the police dog.”
Police recovered the knife in a doll’s pram outside the Broadhurst’s home. He was arrested and then released on bail.
A few months later, on July 9, he was seen bare-chested and drunk in the road close to his house and a police officer escorted him home.
At 3.30am the next morning his neighbour Diane Summerhayes was woken by police who told her that her car window had been smashed.
She called her husband Christopher, who was working nights, and he returned home to help sweep up the broken glass.
He heard shouting and saw a bare-chested man walking down the road holding a large wooden two-by-four.
Mr Summerhayes tried to calm the situation by saying “hello mate, what are you doing?”
Broadhurst replied “I’m looking for someone, anyone” and, when Mr Summerhayes turned away, he hit him with the plank.
Mr Jones said: “He was dizzy and watched the male walk away.”
Mr Summerhayes suffered a graze behind his left ear and swelling.
When arrested, “extremely erratic” Broadhurst was “foaming at the mouth”.
In court today he admitted possessing a blade and public disorder. No charges were pursued in relation to the golf club.
The defendant pleaded guilty to possessing an offensive weapon in relation to the wood and assault causing actual bodily harm.
Mr Jones said he had “an extensive record” of offending anti-social behaviour.
Broadhurst was given a two-year ASBO when he was 19, which banned him from parts of Croxteth, after encouraging dogs to fight in the street.
In January 2012 he was jailed for three years for racially aggravated wounding.
The Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts, Liverpool Crown Court. File picture. Photo by Ian Cooper
Rachel Oakdene, defending, said her client had been drinking and taking drugs and “really has no idea why he had the knife”.
She said: “From a young age he has sought solace in alcohol.”
Ms Oakdene said Broadhurst’s dad had been diagnosed with throat cancer, his partner lost a child, and he lost his job at a factory.
She said: “He turned to alcohol and cocaine use. He says it was an explanation but not an excuse for this loutish behaviour.”
Jailing Broadhurst for 12 months, Judge Neill Flewitt, QC, said: “The possession of a Stanley knife in a public place is in itself a serious matter.
“Combined with the drink and drugs you had taken it doesn’t take much imagination to think how that could have escalated and gone badly wrong.”
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/