Yob arrested for being sober and orderly

aidan_walsh · 18-07-2005 8:32pm #1

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/18/asbo_teen/

A Northumberland teenager has been granted every tearway's dream - an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) requiring him to get drunk and "to use threatening behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to members of the public".

According to UK tabloid the Mirror, the unnamed 15-year-old yobbo was legally obliged to carry alcohol on the streets of his native Alnwick after the order rather agreeably substituted the word "without" for the word "with". Accordingly, the lad was technically in breach of the Asbo if found terrorising the good burghers of his home town without an alcopop in his hand.

The Asbo was issued last February, but the cock-up was only discovered when the teen found himself hauled once more before the magistrates for apparently breaking the conditions of his Asbo, although the case against him was dismissed because he had, obviously, simply been doing as instructed.

An exasperated copper told the Mirror: "It took a long time to bring him to book and get him before the court in the first place. It is maddening to spend all that time only for the order then to tell him to go out and misbehave. It really does beggar belief."

The powers that be are, mercifully, now calling time on the wobbly rascal. A new Asbo will prevent him from "having alcohol in his possession or being drunk in public" and/or "causing distress with unruly behaviour".