Man fined €600 for threatening Gardai

A court in Donegal was told today that a man who claimed constant harassment by gardai got so fed up with it that he asked them for a lift home in the patrol car when he was drunk in Dungloe last September.
When he was refused, and told to take a taxi home, James Mc Bride became abusive and told one Garda, Kieran Naughton, that he would kill him.
Garda Naughton told Dungloe District Court today that James McBride then started struggling with him and another garda, and he was placed in the patrol car to be brought to Glenties Garda station.
McBride then said he “would get him” in Sligo, indicating he knew the garda’s origins.
The court heard that 31-year-old McBride had two convictions for public mischief and theft in the past decade, but Inspector Sylvie Henry told Judge Seamus Hughes he had also been stopped a number of times recently by gardai who suspected he was in possession of drugs.
Insp Henry said records showed McBride, of Dobhair Thuas, Bunbeg, was stopped and searched on the grounds of suspicion five times in the last couple of years.
Defence solicitor Cormac Hartnett said McBride, who denied drugs involvement and had never been prosecuted for such offences, was stopped and searched five times in the last 17 months but he believes the Garda PULSE system did not show all the other times he was stopped.
Mr Hartnett added that McBride apologised for being a nuisance in Main Street, Dungloe, on the night of last September 20th when he asked for a lift home in the Garda patrol car. He admitted being drunk and refusing to obey a Garda instruction.
Judge Hughes fined McBride a total of €600.