A SLEEPING police officer woken by his rowdy next door neighbour found him at the bottom of the garden wielding a pick-axe handle and threatening to break his back, a court heard yesterday.

Sarah Tyrer, prosecuting, told Harrogate magistrates that PC Richard Harper had been woken at 5.30am on February 19 by the sound of banging and shouting outside his home in Hollins Lane, Hamps-thwaite, North Yorkshire.

Outside, he found self-employed builder and joiner Carl Booth, who became abusive when asked what he was doing.

Mrs Tyrer said 40-year-old Booth had moved towards PC Harper holding a pick-axe handle in both hands like a baseball bat.

When the officer managed to take the weapon from Booth, he then adopted a fighting stance, before his wife intervened and persuaded him to return home.

Booth continued to make threats while other officers were arresting him, calling out at one point: "I'll break his back."

In the police van he injured himself banging his hands and elbows on the security cage. Booth was found guilty of using threatening behaviour provoking fear of violence and possession of an offensive weapon - offences he had denied. The court heard he had returned home in the early hours in an agitated state. Defence solicitor Andrew Tinning said Booth maintained he had been the victim of an assault. And he had been the only one to suffer an injury - a bruised arm.

Mr Tinning said Booth ended up living next to PC Harper because his family had been the victims of crime.

There had been a burglary at their home in the Bilton area of Harrogate, which upset his wife, so the family moved to Hampsthwaite.

Booth was ordered to do 80 hours of unpaid community work and pay £400 costs