EACH and every day, criminals cause misery across Colchester and North Essex whether it be with violence, drug dealing or depraved sexual acts.

Here are the faces of the people police brought to justice in July who have received substantial jail sentences at crown court.

Gazette:

A THUG has been jailed for three years after a two-day rampage fuelled by alcohol.

Jason Knights climbed to the top of the roof of the flats where he lived in Dudley Road, Clacton, in April and threw tiles down into the communal garden where other residents were.

After being talked down he came down, but armed himself with a hammer and a screwdriver and began banging on his neighbour’s door screaming he would cut her because she called the police.

Another resident got him away from the scene but he returned again, this time with a knife, and repeated his vile threat.

Knights, 49, then threw a hammer through her window and trashed his own flat.

He was arrested and taken to custody where he racially abused a police officer.

Knights was bailed with specific instructions not to go back to the address, but did so the next day.

He then followed a stranger who was visiting his mother and threatened him by hanging a kitchen knife above his head and banging on the door.

Knights, who has 28 previous convictions for 52 offences, admitted criminal damage, affray, racially aggravated harassment, threats to kill and threatening behaviour.

Gazette:

AN illegal immigrant forced to work in a cannabis factory to pay off £14,000 he owed to the people who trafficked him to the country has been jailed for ten months.

Police found more than 120 cannabis plants when they raided a home in Tollgate Drive, Stanway, in April.

Two bedrooms, the dining room and the lounge were filled with the drugs along with sophisticated growing equipment including high powered lights hanging from the ceiling and plastic sheeting on the floor.

Elvis Dalipaj was the only person there and was arrested.

The 23-year-old admitted being concerned in the cultivation of cannabis on the basis he was coerced into it.

  • A MAN caught with a knife for a second time has been jailed for ten months.

Cameron Haley called the police himself saying he had been self harming all night because he had not been allowed to see his son.

Officers eventually found him drunk outside a kebab shop in Barrack Street, Colchester, where he was bleeding from the left forearm.

A five inch kitchen knife was taken from him and he was treated at hospital.

The incident in May was less than six months after the 24-year-old was given a four month suspended sentence for dialling 999 and threatening to shoot and stab police officers who came near him.

Haley, of St Peter’s Road, West Mersea, admitted possession of a bladed article and breaching a suspended sentence order.