FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Stuff

UK Man Charged with Assault After Flicking Baked Beans at a Police Officer

A cautionary tale about throwing bits of your breakfast at someone in a position of power.

Technically, this is a weapon. Photo via Flickr user Matt Jones

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A Blackpool man has been charged and fined after flicking three baked beans at a detention officer. Why? Said detention officer failed to bring him a cup of water promptly enough.

You think you'd do quite well in prison, don't you? We all do. You've seen Prison Break and Orange Is the New Black and Oz. You've seen The Shawshank Redemption and The Great Escape and American History X. You're like: Fuck yeah, I'd do well in prison, I'd melt a toothbrush with a lighter into a shiv and stab someone in the neck with it! You're like: get me enough ketchup packets and fruit cups, and I'll brew up a batch of tangy piss-wine in the metallic toilet! You'd dig a tunnel out, wouldn't you? You'd hide blades in dug-out bibles and get really good at chess. You'd cross racial boundaries and somehow unite the white supremacist faction with the black gangs. You'd sort of be like Jesus, if Jesus went to prison for something stupid, like low-level fraud or possession.

Advertisement

But then a man in Blackpool gets charged and fined for flicking three baked beans out through his prison bars onto a corrections officer's shirt, and you think: Actually, I don't think prison is for me. I don't think I will steal that car after all. I really don't like the idea of my kidneys being punctured like two cheap water balloons in a petty and longstanding conflict over a Mars bar.

And so to Blackpool, where the aforementioned three-bean assault went down. As the Blackpool Gazette reports today, Anthony Raynor of South Shore was arrested at 4.30 AM on Sunday morning after shouting abuse and interfering as officers tried to deal with an unconscious woman who had passed out in the street.

He was put in a cell at Blackpool Police Station and—and this turned out to be a crucial mistake—given breakfast, and at 9AM he asked for a glass of water. Pam Smith, prosecuting, told Blackpool Magistrates Court today that Raynor soon became abusive to the point that he threw the scant remains of his breakfast out of the cell and onto a police officer, who was so stained with lukewarm bean juice that he had to change his shirt. Raynor claimed the water request took an hour and a half to fulfill, although CCTV footage shows it only took three minutes.

"He flicked three baked beans from his breakfast through the hatch and they landed on the officer's shirt," said Howard Green, defending. "This was not a serious act of violence, but one of stupidity."

Raynor's punishment for the shouting/flicking beans at the police combo: a fine of $115 and a $30 victim surcharge (the approximate cost of one bean-soaked shirt), which—seeing as he couldn't pay immediately—was transferred into a sentence to stay within the confines of the court until lunchtime, which he hopefully spent without throwing any food fragments at anyone. He managed it, and what we are left with is a cautionary tale: Do not get arrested, kids, you will not survive prison; do not throw beans at police officers, kids, they will use every inch of the law to hurt you.

Follow Joel on Twitter.