A MAN who posed as a policeman to get free sex from a prostitute was ordered to attend a sex offenders' programme yesterday.

Michael Walton was told by a judge that it was intended to do something constructive about his trawling through a red light district.

The 40-year-old, who has a girlfriend in France, posed as a policeman and told prostitutes that he could keep the vice squad off their backs, said Christine Egerton, prosecuting.

He dressed in a dark ribbed sweater with epaulettes, a belt with a handcuff pouch and a blue fleece. He also had a mattress in the back of his van, similar to ones used in police cells.

Yesterday, Judge Les Spittle sentenced him to two years' community rehabilitation programme with a condition of attending the Northumbria sex offenders' programme.

In September, Walton of The Green, High Coniscliffe, near Darlington, County Durham, was found not guilty at Teesside Crown Court of raping an 18-year-old prostitute in Middlesbrough on July 24, but guilty of indecently assaulting another, aged 34, between January and July last year.

The jury was told that he pleaded guilty to procuring the elder woman to have sexual intercourse by false pretences between April 30 and August 12 last year.

He went missing while the jury was considering their verdicts and fled to France. He was arrested after arriving back at Waterloo Station, in London.

Walton was only caught out when he was stopped in the company of a prostitute by genuine officers, the court was told earlier.

Police were questioning him when the woman told them: "You'll know him, he's one of your colleagues."

They searched his home and found handcuffs and police-style clothing.

Officers traced a former girlfriend from 1999 who said he told her he had been in the Metropolitan force and had later worked as a security guard at the Rothmans factory, in Darlington.

The judge told Walton that the police had a difficult enough job dealing with prostitutes in Middlesbrough without having their authority undermined by the belief that there were "bent police officers" on the streets.