A KNIFEMAN who threatened to kill Probation Service staff because he “wanted to go back to prison” has been jailed.

David Dicks, 35, issued the chilling warning against the team working at the Caerphilly office.

Judge Richard Twomlow told him: “You had an appointment with probation.

"You made very unpleasant threats to a police officer but towards probation staff, to cause them injury, and backed those remarks up by having a knife in your possession.

MORE NEWS

“When you were arrested you said you were doing so because you wanted to go back to prison.

“Threatening to kill is a serious offence because it involves you intending that those to whom you make the threats believe it.

“The people threatened here are performing a valuable and difficult public service and should not be subject to such behaviour. That applies to the police and the Probation Service.”

The defendant pleaded guilty to making threats to kill and possessing an offensive weapon in Caerphilly’s Pontygwindy Industrial Estate on March 23.

Suzanne Payne, prosecuting, said Dicks had previous convictions for similar offences.

She told the court he had served prison sentences for threats to kill and weapons offences in both 2017 and 2019.

Dicks’ barrister, Hilary Roberts, told Cardiff Crown Court at an earlier hearing: “He has a history of this sort of thing. There was never any intention to kill anybody.

“The threat was made so that he would be arrested. That’s what he says today.

“He has been receiving medication in prison, including methadone, and is clean from opiates.”

Mr Roberts added: “He is quite lucid and determined. The threat he made was a deliberate course of action.”

Dicks, of Queen’s Road, Elliots Town, New Tredegar, Caerphilly, was jailed for two years at Cardiff Crown Court.