Late on January 10, police attended commercial premises in South Dunedin after a burglar alarm had been activated, the Dunedin District Court heard yesterday.
Several of the doors at the site were ajar and a ladder had been placed against a building to access its roof.
A few minutes later, a police dog handler saw a shadowy figure riding a bike nearby and asked him to stop.
The rider, 38-year-old Ricky Allan Joseph Gawn, "dramatically quickened his pace" and pedalled away.
But when patrol vehicles became involved in the pursuit, the game was up.
Once officers realised it was Gawn, a man with a string of convictions to his name, they called out that he was under arrest.
But the frantic cyclist was in no mood to accept the inevitable.
"F... off," he yelled back.
He turned down a driveway to a school in a bid to lose police but reached a dead end.
The court heard Gawn tried to scale a wooden fence but was grabbed by a dog handler.
The defendant struck the officer in the face with a metal torch but was dragged down, hiding something in his underwear in the process.
The reason for his desperation soon became clear.
Police found two cellphones, a security guard uniform and a radio scanner tuned to the police frequency, "actively receiving police transmissions in real time", a summary of facts said.
A capsule in Gawn’s underpants contained nearly 4g of the class A drug methamphetamine, worth about $1400.
Judge Deidre Orchard noted the defendant had not been charged with the burglary of the business.
"He really had the full kit for burglary and the fact he didn’t stop for police and did his level best to avoid them would indicate he was up to no good," she said.
The judge said Gawn was on bail at the time and in breach of his 7pm curfew by nearly five hours.
Seven months earlier, he had argued with his girlfriend and thrown a beer can at her face before gouging her eyes.
The victim yelled to her mother that Gawn was "trying to kill me" and eventually escaped by climbing out of a window.
Judge Orchard said the defendant had a significant criminal history and was in court "yet again".
Two apology letters written by Gawn failed to move her.
"Given your history and your enthusiasm for offending I take them both with a pretty large grain of salt," she said.
Gawn was convicted of assaulting a female, possessing burglary instruments, aggravated assault, aggravated failing to stop for police, possessing meth and resisting police.
He was jailed for 18 months.
