A man who sparked a 20-hour armed police siege by barricading himself in his flat with a meat cleaver and a machete has been jailed.
Ryan Duke threatened to kill police, stuck the weapons through his door and splashed police with white spirit, which he poured through the letterbox of his Ann Street home.
The 28-year-old also climbed onto scaffolding and threw items, which hit the officers and endangered their life.
A large emergency response including armed units, fire brigades and ambulances was deployed at around 3am on October 28 and the area was placed on lockdown.
Police negotiators and a relative of Duke’s tried to reason with him but eventually the emergency services battered down his door to gain entry.
Dundee Sheriff Court heard Duke has schizophrenia and was suffering from paranoia at the time of the incident.
Defence solicitor Ian Houston said: “He had been communicating with his brother, Ben Duke, to lend him some money. At that time the accused was in a good state.
“During the course of the night Ben Duke bumped into Ryan Duke’s old social worker.
“She felt the need to check on him. Ben then went to the house and there was a further conversation which led him to call police.
“He said ‘please don’t send police with blue lights’. He felt the state of his brother was so paranoid that police attending would exacerbate his paranoia.
“They turned up with firearms officers, the whole lot. This tipped him over the edge.
“I offer no criticism of the police, they have a job to do. But, if everybody had left him alone then probably nothing would have happened.”
Duke’s aunt, a civil servant for the Scottish Government, joined the negotiations to try to calm him down and felt “progress was being made”, the court heard.
Her opinion was that the police breaking down the door was “premature”.
Duke, a prisoner of HMP Perth, pled guilty to behaving in a threatening or abusive manner by shouting, swearing, repeatedly threatening to harm himself, challenging police to fight and threatening to kill and injure them.
Sheriff Carmichael sentenced Duke to 12 months in prison, backdated to October 28.
He said: “I’ve got a governor’s report here which isn’t terribly positive and a social work report that isn’t positive either.
“I do not think there is any alternative but a custodial sentence.”
