A DRUNKEN and aggressive racist who spat in a police officer’s eye after she had bravely gone into his cell to check on his welfare has been jailed for 18 months.

Robert Wilson had been arrested for the second time in a matter of days for threatening, abusive and disorderly behaviour in Bingley’s Five Rise Shopping Centre, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

Wilson, 46, of Charles Street, Bingley, was asleep with his jumper round his neck when the officer went into the cell to ensure that he was all right.

He had already urinated on his cell door and hurled vile abuse at her, the court was told.

While she was in the cell, he ran at her and then spat in her eye through the hatch.

Prosecutor Nathan Davies said that Wilson had 41 convictions for 100 offences, including serving five and a half years for robbery. His record was littered with shop thefts and there was also battery, possession of a bladed article and assault on an emergency worker.

On December 11 last year, he was caught stealing a £3 belt from Home Bargains in Myrtle Walk, Bingley. He racially insulted and abused a security guard and threatened to smash his face in.

On Christmas Eve, Wilson was holding a Stanley knife at the shopping centre and racially abusing the same security guard.

He then turned his attention to a police officer and racially abused him. 

He urinated on his cell door at Trafalgar House Police Station in Bradford and called the woman officer he spat at a “f***ing wh***.”

The officer said she found Wilson’s conduct “absolutely disgraceful” at a time when she was trying to help him.

He pleaded guilty to shop theft, possession of an offensive weapon in a public place, racially aggravated threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, and assault on an emergency worker.

Christopher Styles said in mitigation that Wilson was drinking to excess and stealing to pay for the alcohol after two tragic bereavements last year.

He had been remanded in HMP Leeds for almost three months under the Covid lockdown regime.

Judge Jonathan Rose said Wilson was “a pathetic figure”, a racist who abused alcohol and used “language of the gutter” to people doing their jobs.

He had spat in the eye of a police officer who went into his cell to check on his welfare, despite knowing how he had been behaving.