A Fife thug bit a policeman on the face and only let go when a colleague pepper sprayed him.
Michael Traynor shouted and swore at officers as they tried to move him away from a block of flats in Cowdenbeath’s South Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day last year.
A male constable took Traynor to the ground where the lout sank his teeth into his cheek, drawing blood.
Traynor, 35, of Copeland Crescent, Cowdenbeath, appeared at Dunfermline Sheriff Court to plead guilty to assault to injury and behaving in a threatening or abusive manner.
Face bite horror
Prosecutor Catherine Stevenson told the court it was around 12.25am when police received a call about a male acting aggressively in the street.
Officers arrived to see Traynor shouting up at a block of flats.
He began shouting and swearing at police as they approached and refused to comply with instructions to move away.
He was stopped when he tried to re-enter the building and two officers began to “herd” him up the street, the fiscal said.
A male constable put Traynor “in a headlock” and took him to the ground and a female officer tried to handcuff him.
The fiscal continued: “He then held his head up and has bitten (the male officer) to the left cheek, breaking the skin and causing immediate bleeding.”
Traynor refused to let go of the officer’s face and pulled his victim’s head down towards the ground while he still had his mouth on his cheek.
The other officer used pepper sprayed Traynor’s face and he finally let go and the wounded PC was taken to Victoria Hospital for treatment.
Second offence
Sheriff Susan Duff pointed out Traynor has another conviction for assaulting a police officer, for which he was given 100 hours of unpaid work in October last year, 31 hours of which he has completed.
Ms Buist said Traynor has no recollection of his engagement with police on January 1 last year but recalls “looking for a dog” which had escaped from the person he was visiting that night.
He was heavily intoxicated at the time but has been trying to address an alcohol issue by engaging with an addiction support agency.
Ms Buist said Traynor lost his employment as a result of the first conviction and remains unemployed.
Sentencing, Sheriff Duff told Traynor: “Doing that to a police officer who was at his work and on duty is absolutely disgraceful and merits a custodial sentence.”
However, she gave him 231 hours of unpaid work, meaning a total of 300 hours for him still to complete.
She also gave him a curfew order for 10 months and 24 days, meaning he must stay home from 7pm and 7am except a 9.45 to 10pm window to take out his dog.
The sheriff warned if he were to “trip up at all” on the community order he would be back in a position where he “should be getting the jail”.
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