Inverness woman kicked off-duty police officer on her head
A first offender who committed a violent attack on an off-duty police officer who had intervened in an Inverness city centre disturbance was told she was only avoiding a prison sentence because she had reached the age of 30 without offending.
But Sheriff Neil Wilson warned Demi MacLennan of the city's Union Street: "You are on the cusp of being sent to prison. This was an unprovoked attack."
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She was ordered to carry out 180 hours of unpaid work as an alternative to custody. She had admitted the assault to injury and threatening behaviour.
At a previous hearing, her co-accused, 38-year-old Malcolm Watson, of Lochaber Road, Fort William was ordered to do 100 hours of community work after he admitted shouting and swearing at security workers and staff inside a Church Street building and hitting one of them on the head on December 29, 2023.
Fiscal depute David Morton told Inverness Sheriff Court: “A police officer had just finished her shift and was walking down Church Street to return to her car. She was not in uniform.
"She came upon an incident involving the accused and others who were causing a disturbance outside licensed premises. She intervened but then felt herself being hit on the back of the head from behind.
"The accused continued to strike her on the face and scratched her.
“The off-duty officer shouted at her telling her she was a police officer and the assault continued. At one point the accused inserted her fingers in the officer's mouth and scratched the inside of her cheek then knocked her glasses off her head."
The officer was seized by the hair and dragged to the ground and also kicked on the head by MacLennan, the court learned.
Mr Morton added that MacLennan was arrested and taken to Burnett Road Police Station where she waited in a van before being taken into the custody suite.
"A constable was watching her and she shouted abuse at him connected to his race and colour and called him a paedophile."
Defending, Graham Mann said: “She has never behaved like this before. No excuse can be offered for behaviour as abhorrent as this. She had an awful lot of alcohol that night."
