A 44-year-old man who drunkenly assaulted a lone female police officer in Spalding in the early hours of the morning, had just that day returned from his home in Romania.
Stefan Ion of High Street, Spalding, who admitted assault by beating, was seen by PC Sharon Walsh near a taxi rank in New Road at 1am on September 6.
Prosecuting, Darren Young said Ion was ‘heavily intoxicated’ and was shouting loudly and when the officer, who was on her own, got out of her car to tell him to calm down, he approached her shouting aggressively and grabbed her by the left arm, raising his right arm above his head.
He said the officer grabbed that arm to prevent anything further happening but she was pushed backwards by Ion.
He said a taxi driver came to her assistance and she was able to handcuff him.
Mitigating, Anita Toal said Ion, who had no previous convictions, had lived and worked in the UK for six years, but that day he had returned on a four day coach trip from Rumania, where he had spent the summer.
She said he had had ‘not enough to eat and too much to drink’ and then his rucksack had been stolen and he had been trying to tell the officer that and he had had no intention of assaulting her.
The magistrates said that a lot of the incident ‘arose out of people not understanding one another’ but said they took ‘very seriously the safety of our public servants’.
Ion was fined £566 and ordered to pay £100 compensation to the officer and a total of £142 in court costs and charges.
