A RACIST crook hurled abuse at a couple who caught him climbing out of a hole in a shop window after a break in.

Jonathan McKenzie has been sent back to prison just weeks after being released after he was caught breaking into a furniture shop.

The 31-year-old broke through the window of Essex BDL Furnishers on Sutton Road at around 2am on July 5 this year.

The commotion of his messy search of the premises attracted neighbours to the scene, and one couple filmed him walking out of the hole he made in the shop window.

He then walked off towards Swanage Road.

As a police car passed him, McKenzie turned and waved at the officers, who then arrested him.

As police placed him in handcuffs, the residents who filmed McKenzie showed footage to the officers, which revealed he had hurled racist abuse at them.

This then led McKenzie to shout further abuse and swear words before police put him inside the vehicle.

During the trip to Southend Police station he yelled further abuse at the police officers, calling one female officer a “s***”.

One of the officers remarked that McKenzie “stank” of alcohol.

McKenzie, of Aluric Close, Grays, admitted burglary and racially aggravated harassment and was jailed yesterday for more than a year.

Mitigating, Clare Dowse told the court: “He doesn’t remember much about it.

“He accepts he was very drunk on the night in question.

“Nothing is taken in the building and he stumbles out.

“He is clearly someone who is unsophisticated and commits unsophisticated offences.

“He has some members of family of ethnic background, he doesn’t know why he said that.

“He apologises for his behaviour.”

Recorder Charlie Sherrard QC told McKenzie: “You have one of the worst records I have seen for a long, long time.

“You have had an opportunity to change, such as intervention of community orders but nothing has worked and you are simply going from crime spree to crime spree and end up in prison, you were only out of prison in May.

“Members of the public carried out a civil assistance to the community and decided to film what you were doing. They did not have to, they put themselves at risk.

“But you treated them with a torrent of vile and despicable abuse. You’re going from one prison sentence to another.”

McKenzie was jailed for one year and eight months.