A judge in Plymouth superbly put a rioter back in his place after he complained to police about immigrants being a waste of taxpayer money.
John Cann, aged 51, pleaded guilty to violent disorder at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court on Monday and appeared at Plymouth Crown to hear his fate on Tuesday (13/8).
Cann had been seen on police video footage on his mobility bike bending down and picking up an item and throwing it at the counter-protestors. He was then shown later picking up firework and hurling it just before it went off.
During police questioning, he had told officers that he had been driven to attend the protests due to concerns over taxpayers’ money being wasted on people who had remained in this country after committing crimes, seemingly in reference to the Southport stabbings, which a Brit orchestrated.
Judge Linford then launched a stinging rebuke to Cann saying: “So let’s look at how the taxpayer have been funding your activities over the last 38 years – let’s see what you’ve cost the country: you’ve got 10 aliases, four fictitious birth dates, you’re 51 years of age, you’ve been convicted of 170 offences, you been convicted of theft, arson, taking cars, handling stolen goods, obtaining by deception, burglary, dangerous driving and possessing bladed articles. In all over the years that you’ve been visiting the criminal justice system you’ve received sentences totalling 357 months in prison, many of them concurrent.
“In other words, nearly 30 years. That Mr Cann is what you’ve been costing this country and you sit there in that interview and saw fit to be critical of others. You have no right whatever to say who should or should not be in this country.”
To Bailey, Judge Linford said he had 29 convictions for 39 offences, including theft, criminal damage, possession of drugs, supply of class A drugs, threatening behaviour, breach of a Domestic Violence Protection Order and robbery “and you were chanting with the rest of that rabble about immigration”
Judge Linford accepted he had pleaded guilty at the earlier opportunity and handed Cann a three-year jail sentence. He said he would serve half before being released on licence.
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