iStockA man who shouted racist comments in a Tesco store and spat lager over a female police officer has been jailed.
Anthony Russell flew into a rage after needing to use the supermarket toilet and finding the facility closed.
He went outside but returned and shouted that the shop, on Falkirk’s Central Retail Park, would be “raided”.
He then made racist comments, with one directed at a member of the public.
Falkirk Sheriff Court heard on Thursday that Russell left again but was still outside and was drinking from a can of lager when police arrived to speak to him.
He was told to stop drinking, but took another slurp and spat “a mouthful of beer into the face and hair of the female officer”.
He was then arrested.
Russell, 49, of Bonnybridge, Stirlingshire, pleaded guilty to statutory breach of the peace and police assault.
At the time of the incident, on May 19 last year, he was said to have been “drinking to excess every day”.
The court heard Russell had “an awful history of previous offending” spanning more than 30 years.
He was jailed for nine months and handed a five-year ban from entering the Tesco.
Sheriff Craig Harris told him: “Shop staff and police officers must be protected.”
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