A DRUNK has been jailed for four months for spitting at a police officer who was sitting in his patrol car with the window open.

Roy Ogbourne, 37, was walking past the vehicle which was parked at the end of Wood Street in Old Town when he launched the attack.

Frank Murphy, prosecuting, said that PC Nicholas Cook was sitting in the car on a Friday evening last September when Ogbourne spat at him, hitting him on the arm.

He said the officer got out of the vehicle and followed the defendant to Victoria Road, where he stopped him and asked him why he had done it.

Mr Murphy said he then swore at the officer. He said Ogbourne was slurring his speech, unsteady on his feet and clearly drunk.

He was arrested for assaulting a police officer and being drunk and disorderly and freed on bail to appear before magistrates in October, but he did not turn up.

Mr Murphy said he was arrested again in the early hours of March 30 this year when he was spotted in a curry house with a carving knife hidden in his trousers.

Another customer at Rafu's, on Victoria Road, was waiting to be served when he spotted the handle of the 12-inch knife sticking out of the back of Ogbourne's waistband.

When Ogbourne was arrested he told police that he was at the curry house to try to get information about four men who had assaulted him.

Mr Murphy said that while Ogbourne was being held in custody the cell was covered in water and tea he had been given and a magazine he had been given to read had been torn up.

Ogbourne, of Swindon Street, pleaded guilty to assaulting a policeman, being drunk and disorderly, failing to surrender to custody, possessing a bladed article and criminal damage.

Hugh Norman, defending, said: "He has no desire to see a probation officer for a pre-sentence report and accepts that with his record of previous convictions he is at risk of going to custody.

"He is prepared to take that on the chin. That says quite a lot about his personal state of mind. As a result of his arrest he lost his job."

He said that the offences all related to his being under the influence of drink.