News / Nuisance caller “prints own ticket to Polmont”
A YOUNG hotel worker was jailed for 12 weeks at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Thursday after refusing to stop making nuisance calls to the local police in Shetland.
In January Nathan Hilditch was ordered to stop dialing 999 without cause after he was charged with making hundreds of such calls between August and December last year.
However two weeks ago he was refused bail after being arrested for causing a breach of the peace in Lerwick’s Esplanade on 1 March, his 19th birthday, and then making more nuisance calls.
The court heard that several people called the police about Hillditch’s “bizarre behaviour” that afternoon.
Officers found him lying across the road blocking traffic, threatening to jump into the sea and placing road traffic cones along the Esplanade.
He ran away from the police, but they managed to restrain him and locked him up for five hours to sober up.
When they released him at 10pm to catch the 11pm bus home, two officers followed the bus and witnessed him getting off twice before it had left town.
They put him back on the bus the first time, and then drove him home to his house at 12a Horseshoe Close, Virkie, when he disembarked again at Sound Brae.
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie insisted Hillditch was sober and lucid during the entire journey and could not blame alcohol for his subsequent behaviour.
The police left him at his house but stayed patrolling in the area expecting more nuisance calls, which soon followed.
They went to his house and warned him to stop, but he persisted with another “silent” 999 call and was taken into custody where he remained until Thursday’s court appearance after being refused bail on 3 March.
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie insisted Hillditch was not drunk, but annoyed at being outmaneuvered by the police.
“This was simply him venting his anger,” he said, adding that he had displayed an “unhealthy interest” in the police, saying he knew the private vehicles driven by local officers.
Defence agent Tommy Allan accepted there was “something weird” about his client’s behaviour, saying he had “printed his own ticket” to Polmont young offenders institute.
The only cause he could identify was his reaction to his parents’ recent separation.
Sheriff Philip Mann said he did not like sending young men to jail, but he had been given little choice.
“You can’t really blame the drink; it would have been easy enough for you to go home and go to your bed and stop annoying the police,” he said.
“You have been given every opportunity that I can think of to stay out of custody and you have failed to take it.
“Despite your young age I can’t see any alternative to a custodial sentence.”
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