'Menace' threw a brick at police car (From thisisoxfordshire)

'Menace' threw a brick at police car

12:00pm Wednesday 15th August 2012 in News By Thom Airs

Alistair Aitken

A “COMPLETE menace” who threw a brick through a police car window has escaped being jailed.

Serial offender Alistair Aitken had drunk four-and-a-half litres of cider before he attacked the vehicle in Saxton Road, Abingdon.

The offence put the 24-year-old in breach of a suspended jail sentence but instead he was given a curfew at Oxford Crown Court on Monday.

Prosecutor Naomi Perry said Aitken, of Preston Road, Abingdon, was caught on CCTV hurling the brick at the unattended car on May 28 while officers were investigating an unrelated matter.

Aitken admitted causing criminal damage and breaching a suspended sentence at an earlier hearing.

The suspended sentence – a year’s jail suspended for two years – had been imposed in November 2010 after Aitken was involved in a gang attack on a Turkish takeaway delivery driver in Preston Road.

Lucy Ffrench, defending, said her client, who lives with his grand- parents and claims job seeker’s allow-ance, had not drunk for three weeks and was on medication to stop him consuming alcohol. The court heard Aitken has 30 convictions for 59 previous offences.

Judge Patrick Eccles, who called Aitken “a complete menace”, said he was unable to activate the suspended prison sentence because he had already served a total of five-and-a-half months in custody awaiting sentence for the original offence.

He said Aitken had been “breaking the law regularly for far too long” but conceded: “Because the court is obliged to deduct from the time you served the amount of time you spent on remand in effect that would mean no more than two weeks left of that suspended sentence. There’s nothing effective that can be done.”

Instead he gave Aitken an eight-week night-time curfew from 7pm until 7am and ordered him to pay £89.77 compensation to police and £75 costs.

Aitken was previously given an Asbo in December, 2008, after he was branded a “drunk, antisocial and violent man” by Vale of White Horse police commander, Supt Andy Boyd. After breaching his antisocial behaviour order just three months later in February 2009, he told the Oxford Mail: “I want to be able to hold a job down and do normal things. I want to say sorry to the police for my behaviour. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

The Asbo was imposed until September, 2010.