Scarborough thug jailed for threatening neighbour with knife and hurling racial abuse at police officer
A Scarborough thug has been jailed after threatening a neighbour with a knife and hurling vile racial abuse at police officers.
Philip Thomson, 46, was initially arrested on June 9 last year after police were called out to reports of a man wielding a knife in the street.
The named victim had just returned from Flamingo Land with his family when Thomson came out of a neighbouring property “staring at him and mumbling incoherently”, said prosecutor Kelly Clarke.
When the victim told Thomson to “mind your own business”, the Scarborough man walked across the road and banged on another neighbour’s door, but the female occupant didn’t answer.
“(Thomson) then came back onto the road and was gesturing for the (victim) to have a fight with him,” said Ms Clarke.
When the victim went over to restrain him, Thomson said: “I’m going to wet you up.”
This was street slang for stabbing someone with a knife, the court heard.
Thomson then shouted through the open door of a neighbouring property to “get me a wetter or a hammer”.
The term “wetter” is slang for a knife.
“(Thomson) went into (that) property and came back out with a kitchen knife with a serrated edge,” added Ms Clarke.
“He was gesturing for the (victim) to attack him while he had the knife in hand.
"The (victim) was telling (Thomson) to put the knife down and the defendant eventually threw the knife (to the) ground.”
As soon as Thomson was disarmed, the victim rugby-tackled him to the ground.
Two other witnesses then restrained him.
Police arrived soon afterwards to arrest Thomson who told officers he had been “tidying up” a friend’s garden and had simply gone inside to get “some snips to cut a rope”.
The racially aggravated offences against police officers occurred on April 14 this year when they were called out to the Grand Hotel on the Scarborough seafront where Thomson was drunk, spouting foul language and refusing to leave.
When the two officers arrived, Thomson hurled “disgusting” racist abuse at one of them.
When he was told by the other officer that his language was “disgusting”, Thomson aimed racial abuse at him too.
In a statement read out by the prosecution, one of the named officers described the racial abuse as “disgusting and appalling”.
Thomson, of Northstead, was charged with two counts of racially aggravated threatening behaviour under the Public Order Act and affray in relation to the incident with the knife.
He admitted the public-order offences against police officers but denied affray.
He was found guilty of the latter following a trial at the lower court.
He appeared at the Crown Court for sentence yesterday (Thursday, August 1).
Ms Clarke said that at the time of Thomson’s offences against the officers, he was on a 12-month suspended prison sentence following a “revenge” attack on a man in Scarborough in October last year where the victim was “tackled” to the ground and repeatedly punched in the face during a drunken attack in Long Walk.
The victim suffered a swollen and bruised eye.
Thomson was in breach of a second suspended jail sentence imposed for assaulting an emergency worker and being drunk and disorderly.
Those offences occurred in February.
He was also in breach of a conditional discharge imposed in April for shoplifting and failing to surrender to custody.
His rap sheet included 66 previous offences including burglaries, robbery, drink-related public disorder, attempted robbery with an imitation firearm, aggravated vehicle-taking, battery and carrying an offensive weapon.
Defence barrister Nick Peacock said that Thomson’s “big problem” was drink.
“He was a drug user (but) he stopped that and his drug of choice became alcohol,” added Mr Peacock.
Judge Simon Hickey said that Thomson’s “appalling” behaviour while wielding the knife in front of residents meant that only an immediate jail sentence could be justified.
He told Thomson: “You are a drunk and when you are drunk you behave appallingly towards others and towards property.”
Thomson was jailed for two-and-a-half years which included consecutive sentences for the affray, his racist barbs towards police and breaching the suspended prison sentences.