A man was fined €1,164.68 today as a magistrate declared that he would adopt a zero tolerance policy where people were convicted of assaulting or threatening policemen.

The accused, hawker Paul Calleja, 61, was convicted of threatened and insulting three police officers in Sliema on July 22, 2012.

He was also found guilty of breaking the conditions of previous court sentences.

Magistrate Joe Mifsud said the court was imposing a fine which was at the top end of what the law provided in 2012.

He stressed that the police needed to be protected and there could be no justification for anyone to threaten, or assault, a policeman.

Police orders needed to be obeyed and the police needed to be shown respect.

The magistrate regretted that there was an increased frequency of people disobeying police orders and even resorting to physical assault, with officers sometimes being injured.

The police should not be demoralised when they did not find the support they needed.

“The police are there to protect the people and officers should not be put in a position where they fear exercising their right to correct people who are breaking the law,” Magistrate Mifsud said.

Earlier in the same sentence the magistrate chided the police for also having arraigned Mr Calleja for minor traffic contraventions and the theft of artichokes from fields.

While the prosecution “almost showed too much enthusiasm” to file “cut-and-paste” charges, it transpired that a lot of them were not applicable to this case, the court said. It also remarked that on a number of times nobody from the prosecution had turned up in court. 

The court also reprimanded the police that in cases like this - which also involved parking a vehicle on double-yellow lines and too close to a corner – it could have acted in a more prudential manner and tried to settle the case amicably. “This is especially the case when a hawker needs to serve his clients in zone were parking space is limited,” the court noted.