A DECISION to allow a serial Asbo breaker to walk free from court has been described as a "smack in the face" to the Hampshire town he has terrorised.
Recovering alcoholic Anthony Cripps, 26, had an Anti-social Behaviour Order slapped on him in 2004 after an unprovoked attack on a taxi driver.
The following year he was jailed for eight months for breaching the terms of that order.
Yesterday, however, and despite admitting to breaching the order's terms for a fourth time by harassing a council worker, Cripps, from Fareham, walked out of Portsmouth Crown Court having been fined just £150.
The leader of Fareham Borough Council, Sean Woodward, last night called the penalty "a nonsense".
"You expect people to be locked up if they breach an Asbo once, let alone when they do it repeatedly," he told the Daily Echo.
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