'Menace' jailed over Asbo breaches (From Oxford Mail)

'Menace' jailed over Asbo breaches

9:00am Monday 30th August 2010 in Editorial Comment By Thom Airs

Byron Haines

PERSISTENT Oxford trouble-maker Byron Haines has finally been jailed after “running out of chances”.

The 19-year-old, once called the “number-one problem” in Blackbird Leys and Greater Leys, was locked up for eight months on Friday.

At Oxford Crown Court, he admitted breaching his Antisocial Behaviour Order (Asbo) on June 23 and July 25 and being in breach of a suspended prison sentence handed down in April for another Asbo breach.

In all, Haines has 19 convictions including offences of violence and drug dealing and, since 2007, two breaches of supervision orders, three breaches of community orders and six Asbo breaches.

Charles Ward-Jackson, prosecuting, said Haines had broken the terms of his Asbo – which was imposed in September last year – by being threatening and abusive outside the mother-and-baby unit in Bullingdon Road, East Oxford, in June.

He said: “A woman was standing outside her place of work just after 2pm when she heard Mr Haines shouting ‘I want my ****ing bike back, if you don’t tell me where he (a man suspected of stealing it) is I will ****ing kill you!’”

Another witness heard Haines, from Greater Leys but now living in Henley Street, East Oxford, shout ‘I will ****ing kick off if I don’t get my bike back’.”

Mr Ward-Jackson added: “On July 25, off-duty officer Pc Stevenson was travelling into work on a bus down Cowley Road just after 1pm when he noticed the defendant standing in the street. Laying at his feet was a dog which looked like a Staffordshire bull terrier.

“He radioed to colleagues and Sgt Rob Axe arrived in a police car and arrested him.”

Under the terms of his Asbo, Haines is prohibited from keeping or being in control of a dog.

The court heard Haines’s most recent conviction – for which he received a six-month suspended sentence in April – was for breaching his Asbo by threatening a knife-wielding man with the seat post of a bicycle in a “violent stand-off” in Between Towns Road, Cowley.

Clare Fraser, defending, said the offences “were not the most serious breaches” and added: “I think he would say the type of language he would use on a daily basis is what others would take to be threatening.

“As far as he’s concerned he didn’t use threats of violence towards anyone and the language he was using was because he was upset he was led to believe someone had stolen his bike.”

Judge Anthony King told Haines: “When a court makes an order it does so for a purpose and in your case that is to ensure you comply with the law and don’t cause threats or fear to other persons, and when a court makes an order it requires it to be obeyed, and if you don’t, there are consequences.

“You don’t seem to be able to understand the lesson that it’s intended to teach you. You’ve run out of chances this time.”

Father-of-one Haines will serve half his eight-month sentence behind bars, but has already been on remand for 52 days, meaning he will be released in about nine weeks.

After the hearing, Blackbird Leys Pc Russell Stevenson said: “It’s a case of his past catching up with him.

“I don’t think you can call him anything other than a nuisance.

“There’s a lot of talk at the minute of Asbos being withdrawn, but I think this shows people that they can be used to imprison people.”