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Two more jailed over violent protest in Bristol

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September 17, 2024
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Two more men have been jailed for their role in a city centre protest which turned violent.

James Maine, 44, and Shane Dennis, 30, were sentenced at Bristol Crown Court earlier in connection with the disorder in Bristol on Saturday 3 August.

The unrest occurred when protesters and counter protesters gathered near Castle Park in the city centre.

Avon and Somerset Police have arrested 51 people in connection with the disorder, with 37 being charged so far.

Maine, of Kingswood, received a 28-month jail sentence after throwing missiles at police and punching a member of the public, which was captured on CCTV.

Judge Peter Blair said Maine’s involvement was “persistent”, and described him as “one of the central individuals” carrying our the violent disorder.

Dennis, of Knowle, was jailed for four weeks after pleading guilty to a racially-aggravated public order offence after shouting racist remarks in Castle Park that same day.

Judge Blair accepted Dennis was not directly involved in the violence, but said his actions were “provocative” and helped fuel the disorder.

Demonstrations took place across England after three young girls were killed in Southport, Merseyside, on 29 July.

False claims were spread online that the person responsible was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK by boat.

“There was no excuse for violence that day,” said Det Ch Insp Tom Herbert.

“The scenes played out in Bristol on 3 August were criminal and disgraceful, and now more than 20 people have been sentenced for what they did on that day.

“Detectives are continuing to investigate, and work with the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts to ensure all those responsible for such reprehensible scenes are brought to justice.”

Avon and Somerset Police said it was still keen to identify a number of people, external that officers want to speak to as part of their investigation.

Earlier, a 25-year-old man from the Shirehampton area of Bristol was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder and is currently in police custody.
BBC News

Carer among eight people remanded over Tamworth disorder

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September 17, 2024
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Cameron Bell admitted a charge of violent disorder at Stafford Crown Court and now faces an ‘inevitable’ custodial sentence.

Six men and two women, including a care worker who broadcast a violent protest on social media, were remanded in custody after appearing in connection with disorder in Tamworth, Staffordshire, on August 4.

Stafford Crown Court was told Cameron Bell, who has no previous convictions, accepted her guilt on a charge of violent disorder “on the understanding that she was present and live-streamed the matter to her TikTok account”.

Bell, 24, from Tamworth, admitted a single count of violent disorder on Tuesday and was remanded in custody for sentencing in the week commencing October 28 after being told a jail sentence was inevitable.

She appeared in the dock alongside her partner Kyle Barber, also from Tamworth, whose case was adjourned until October 8.

Barber, 24, was not asked to enter a plea to a charge of violent disorder and was remanded in custody.

Mitchell Cleaver, 25, of Burton-on-Trent, appeared jointly via videolink from HMP Dovegate along with Martin McCluskey, 60, from Tamworth.

Cleaver, wearing a vest, admitted a charge of riot relating to events in Tamworth on August 4, where a hotel containing housing asylum seekers was set on fire, and will be sentenced on October 30.

McCluskey admitted violent disorder and pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting an emergency worker.

Judge John Edwards ordered a psychological assessment to be carried out on Cleaver, who has serious learning difficulties and was caught on police drone footage, before sentencing on November 11.

The judge ordered McCluskey to remain in custody until sentencing on October 30.

Tommy McQuaker, 29, of Amington in Tamworth, made a separate videolink appearance from HMP Dovegate.

He admitted violent disorder and pleaded not guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to a police dog, with prosecutors accepting the latter charge should not be proceeded with.

Adjourning McQuaker’s case to November 8, Judge Edwards told him: “I will accede to your barrister’s request for a pre-sentence report but please don’t take it from that that your sentence will be anything other than one of prison.”

Simon Orr, 38, from Tamworth, is accused of riot and assaulting a female police officer.

He admitted assault but pleaded not guilty to riot on the grounds he does not accept having a common purpose with others present at the scene.

His case was adjourned for trial in the week commencing January 20.

No pleas were taken from Darren Woodley, 55, also from Tamworth and also charged with violent disorder. He was remanded in custody until next Monday.

Last to appear before the same judge was Aimie Hodgkinson-Hedgecox, who pleaded guilty to violent disorder.

The 37-year-old, from Rugeley, was said to have had “somewhat limited” involvement in the disorder and will reappear for sentence in custody in the week beginning November 4.

Evening Standard

Southport boy ‘chose to be part of an angry mob’

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September 17, 2024
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To recap, Liverpool Youth Court heard the 12-year-old boy threw two stones at police officers in Southport on 30 July.

The boy – who cannot be named because of his age – was said to have gone to the scene outside the town’s mosque because he was “curious” after seeing a fire.

But, his defence said he was not involved in racist chanting and had no previous convictions.

He pleaded guilty last month – which the court heard meant he avoided a prison sentence.

District Judge Wendy Lloyd told the boy “it was an angry mob and you chose to be a part of it”.

“It was a really horrible situation and you made it all the more horrible by joining in and throwing stones,” she added.

The district judge has just sentenced the 12-year-old to a 12-month referral order – and the boy will also be subject to a curfew between 21:00 and 07:00 each night.

A referral order is a sentence available to the courts when dealing with young people below the age of 18 who have admitted an offence. It requires them to take part in a rehabilitation programme aimed at preventing them from offending in the future.

“You’ll work with the young offending team – to make sure you don’t offend again and to protect other people from your offending,” the district judge tells him.

BBC News

Six people have pleaded guilty to charges related to the disorder in Tamworth last month.

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September 17, 2024
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Six men and two women appeared at Stafford Crown Court on Tuesday accused of committing offences during the disturbance at the town’s Holiday Inn Express on 4 August.

Cameron Bell, 23, Martin McClusky, 60, and Tommy McQuaker, 29, all from Tamworth, admitted violent disorder.

McClusky also pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting a police officer.

Aimee Hodgkinson, 37, from Rugeley, Staffordshire, admitted violent disorder, while Mitchell Cleaver, 25, from Tamworth, pleaded guilty to a charge of riot.

Simon Orr, 38, from Tamworth, pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer but not guilty to riot. His trial for the latter charge has been scheduled for 20 January.

Kyle Barber, 24, and Darren Woodley, 55, both from Tamworth, did not enter pleas to charges of violent disorder and their cases have been adjourned.

Those who pleaded guilty are due to be sentenced at later dates.

BBC News

Boy, 14, sentenced after throwing bricks at police vans in Manchester

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September 17, 2024
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Let’s head to Manchester Magistrates’ Court where a 14-year-old boy has just been sentenced for “cowardly and shameful” violent disorder outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in the city.

The boy, who can’t be named for legal reasons, was celebrating his 14th birthday when he joined a group of adults and youths who threw missiles at police and the Holiday Inn, Newton Heath, on 31 July.

Magistrates were shown CCTV footage of the teenager throwing bricks at police vans and kicking a bus.

The bus driver was later assaulted, although the boy was not involved in that attack, the court heard.

The court was told the boy was also part of a group goading police officers and trying to knock their helmets off. The boy, who pleaded guilty to violent disorder at an earlier hearing, said he was “ashamed” and “very sorry” for what he had done.

District Judge Margaret McCormack gave the boy a 12-month referral order and described his behaviour as “wicked” but accepted he had made a “stupid mistake” and was sorry for what he had done.

The boy’s mother, who was in court, was ordered to pay £150 compensation to the bus driver.

BBC News

Boy arrested on 13th birthday sentenced for throwing egg at police

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September 17, 2024
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A bit more now from Manchester Magistrates’ Court where a teenager who was arrested on his 13th birthday, for his part in violent disorder outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in the city, has just been sentenced.

The teenager, who was 12 at the time of the incident in July, was given a 12-month referral order by District Judge Margaret McCormack.

The hearing was told he threw objects at police, including an egg, and also goaded police officers.

District Judge McCormack told the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, that the group of adults and youths outside the Holiday Inn were “terrorising people trying to go about their daily lives”.

“You may have been 12 but you knew what you were doing was wrong”, she told him.

In defence, the court was told the boy was “not a racist” and was “ashamed by his actions” .

His mother, who was in court, was ordered to pay £150 compensation to a bus driver, who was assaulted by others during the violence.

BBC News

Neo-Nazi found with home ‘armoury’ guilty of terrorism offences

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September 17, 2024
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A neo-Nazi who amassed an “armoury” at his home in Stirlingshire has been found guilty of crimes including plans to commit an act of terrorism.

Alan Edward, who had nearly 28,000 followers on social media, had discussed an attack on a LBGT group in Falkirk, the High Court in Stirling heard.

The 54-year-old was arrested after armed police surrounded his end-terrace house in Redding, Falkirk, in September 2022 and broke down his front door.

He denied all the offences, but a jury found him guilty of charges under the Terrorism Act, racism, anti-Semitism, holocaust denial and breach of the peace.

The trial heard that Edward wrote the “the quickest way to someone’s heart is with a high power 7.62mm round”.

Police found weapons and equipment including a crossbow, 14 knives – some with Nazi and SS insignia, machetes, a tomahawk, a samurai sword, knuckledusters, a catapult, an extendable baton and a stun gun.

They also found an air pistol, an SS-style skull mask, goggles and a respirator, fighting gloves with hardened knuckles, pellets, ball bearings, and hunting tips for crossbow arrows.

Prosecutors said it amounted to “an armoury” of weapons.

Edward also had an indoor cannabis plantation that he was growing to sell.

The court heard he possessed and expressed “a set of ideals with a neo-Nazi outlook, incorporating notions of white supremacy, the notion of racial purity of whites, racism, anti-semitism, and hatred of homosexuals and transgender people”.

Sinister exchanges

A document found on his computer referred to Norweigian neo-Nazi mass murderer Anders Breivik as “Saint Anders”.

Checks on his WhatsApp account found he had been messaging an associate in nearby Grangemouth about the proposed attack on an LBGT group.

In a series of exchanges described by the prosecution as “incredibly sinister”, he said: “They have been pushing their luck for years, now they will pay in blood.”

He added: “We should get masked up and go do a few of them in at their little gay club.”

Other messages targeted communists and Jews.

The court also heard that Edward had two accounts on Gab, a free speech social media platform popular with the far right.

He came to the attention of counter-terrorism investigators after posting a video of a National Action rally held in 2016 – shortly before it became the first far-right group to be proscribed in the UK under the Terrorism Act.

Prosecutor Paul Kearney KC said Edward was “a man who with clear neo-Nazi ideals – preparing for an act of terrorism which would include an ideologically-driven incident of serious violence”.

Judge Fiona Tait deferred sentence until 21 October at the High Court in Edinburgh.

BBC News

Pallister Park teen joined riot for ‘sheer excitement and adrenaline’ then hurled rocks at cops

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September 17, 2024
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Lennox Crockett travelled from his Pallister Park home to join the riot in Hartlepool in July



A teen who got involved in the Hartlepool riots for “the sheer excitement and adrenaline” has been sent to a Young Offenders Institution.

Lennox Crockett handed himself into police after he was caught on bodycam footage throwing rocks at a line of police, from close quarters, in the midst of the screaming and chaos of the riots on July 31. The 19-year-old was dressed all in black, with his hood up, but was captured arguing with police as they shouted at rioters to move back.

He was seen encouraging others, including children, to push at the police line. On Monday, every seat in court one at Teesside Crown Court was taken, as Crockett’s mother and extended family attended his sentencing.

The Middlesbrough court watched police bodycam footage, showing Crockett repeatedly throwing rocks at riot officers, who held up their plastic shields to protect themselves from being hit. The court heard that weeks before the riot, Crockett was arrested after police were called out to a report of a burglary.

Officers followed CCTV of a group of men running away from a house, towards a block of flats on Burwell Road, in Ormesby, Middlesbrough. They found him in a flat, with other men, sitting around a table with cannabis and cocaine on it.

Police reported nitrous oxide canisters lying around on the floor of the flat. Crockett told officers that all of the drugs were his and that he was “having a party.”

Crockett, of Denham Green, Pallister Park in Middlesbrough, pleaded guilty to violent disorder and to the possession of class A and B and C drugs; and failing to surrender to custody – after he failed to turn up at Teesside Magistrates’ Court on September 5.

He has a previous conviction from July 15, for the possession of nitrous oxide for wrongful inhalation. In mitigation, Michele Turner said that all of her client’s offending is recent and “it is to fit in”.

The defence barrister said: “He took it on himself to protect others, who he feels he’s been befriended by” when he admitted to the drugs. Ms Turner said that Crockett was expelled from primary school at a young age and that “he has been affected by the stigma of going to special school. He left with no qualifications”.

“This is a man who has been trying to fit in since early childhood,” she said. “At primary school he felt like he never understood what was going on around him and he struggled to make friends. He learnt that if he acted the fool, he got laughs and he got recognition.”
‘Sheer excitement’

Ms Turner said that Crockett has learning difficulties and struggles to read and write; he doesn’t have a bank account; he doesn’t understand that he is entitled to benefits and that “he relies on his mum and extended family for everything”.

“He travelled to Hartlepool for the violence that was going on” Crockett’s solicitor added, “it was the sheer excitement and adrenaline – I think is the way to explain his involvement. His fight was against the police.”

Judge Francis Laird told Crockett: “I recognised your struggle with school and that you lack many of the tools necessary for an independent life. Your mother largely supports your lifestyle which unfortunately in recent times, has revolved around recreational drugs.”

The judge said that he was “encouraged” by the number of people in court and that Crockett “clearly comes from a loving and caring family.” “I will pass no separate penalty for the drugs offences and failing to surrender to custody,” the judge said, before sending Crockett to a Young Offenders’ Institution for 18-months.

Gazette Live

Man admits violent disorder and assaulting police

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September 17, 2024
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A man has admitted violent disorder and assaulting a police officer during the unrest in Stoke-on-Trent last month.

Father-of-one Tyler Marchese, 21, pleaded guilty to the offences committed when the disorder broke out in Hanley on 3 August.

During a hearing at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court on Monday, Judge Sally Hancox said Marchese would “almost inevitably” receive a custodial sentence.

“You have taken a very sensible step to accept your involvement in the events on 3 August. Your sentence must be one that reflects your part in it,” she said.

Marchese, of Norris Road, Stoke-on-Trent, will be sentenced in the same court on 27 September.

Staffordshire Police recently said it had arrested more than 80 people and charged more than 30 following the disorder in Stoke-on-Trent on 3 August and in Tamworth on 4 August.

Riots and anti-immigration protests took place across the UK after three young girls were killed in Southport, Merseyside, on 29 July.

The action was fuelled by false claims on social media that the attacker was an asylum seeker.

BBC News

Bored teen ran into smashed asylum hotel in riot

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September 17, 2024
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A teenager who ran into a hotel housing asylum seekers after large crowds smashed windows and doors during large-scale disorder has been told he will be detained for more than two years.

Ashley Lowe, 19, was among a group who attacked police outside the Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, Rotherham, on 4 August.

He went to the trouble “because there was nothing else to do” and it led to him kicking fence panels and entering the building, Sheffield Crown Court was told.

Lowe, of North Street, Darfield, admitted violent disorder and was told he would serve two years and two months at a youth offenders’ institution.

Family members in the public gallery cried during the hearing, where Lowe was seen to have participated in the disorder in footage played to the court.

A photo from the scene showed him near a group of people who were throwing items at officers.

Former professional boxer Luke Crowcroft was also jailed for his role in the violence.

He was filmed on CCTV rocking a police dog van, leaving the officers inside fearing it would be tipped over.

Crowcroft, 30, of Danesway, Doncaster, was arrested on the 27 August, more than three weeks after the violence.

He pleaded guilty to violent disorder at an earlier court appearance.

Character references sent to the judge outlined how he had engaged in charity work and represented his country as a boxer at a young age.

“All of his life he has been disciplined… save for that day,” his barrister said in mitigation.

“He wishes to apologise for the shame he has brought on his own family.”

He was jailed for two years and six months.

Ben Beardsley, 38, of Hall Gate, Mexborough, Doncaster, also pleaded guilty to a charge of violent disorder.

He wore a white Guy Fawkes mask during his part in the trouble, the court was told.

He was filmed throwing lumps of concrete towards police officers, with his defence counsel adding he was drunk during the disorder.

In court, the father-of-two was jailed for two years and eight months.

Joshua Webb, 21, of Hartington Close, Rotherham, went to the hotel “out of curiosity” before becoming embroiled in the violence, the court was told.

Video filmed by a resident showed Webb, wearing a “distinctive” Icon tracksuit throwing pieces of wood towards the police line.

He was jailed for two years and six months, with his sentence being reduced following his co-operation with police.

“You made a very poor decision to attend,” Judge Sarah Wright told him during the hearings in courtroom number seven.

‘Chill out’

A man who was charged with arson being reckless as to whether life was in danger also appeared in court.

He pleaded guilty to the offence, along with a count of violent disorder.

The arson charge related to a disused generator on the edge of the hotel car park.

Scott Greenwood, 34, of Tingle Bridge Lane, Hemingfield, started speaking with someone in the public gallery, leading to the judge telling him to be quiet.

He replied: “Alright mate, chill out.”

He claimed he “hadn’t even done owt” when questioned by the judge for speaking during the hearing.

When told to leave, he shouted to the public gallery: “See you in a bit”.

In his absence, a sentencing date was set for 16 October.

BBC News