Man threw vacuum cleaner and told police 'I hope your children get raped' during Middlesbrough riots

Footage released by Cleveland Police captured Thomas Rogers smashing the window of a residential property with a vacuum cleaner

A man threw a vacuum cleaner through a house window and told a police officer “I hope your children get raped” during riots in Middlesbrough.

Thomas Rogers, 22, was “overwhelmed by distaste for what had happened in Southport” when he joined a 1,000-strong protest that “quickly turned violent” in the town on Sunday 4 August, a court heard.

Appearing at Teesside Crown Court on Monday (12 August), the defendant was jailed for 26 months having pleaded guilty to violent disorder and possession of an offensive weapon.

Rachel Masters, prosecuting, said Rogers was seen throwing bricks at police by an officer who later asked if he was okay, as he had blood on his T-shirt.

Rogers replied he had cut his hand throwing rocks at the police, and “would do it again."

He then told the officer: “I hope your kids get raped, I hate the police.”

A statement from a student who lives in the shared house where Rogers was filmed throwing a vacuum cleaner through the window said he and his partner had been left “feeling differently about the town they called home and the people they lived amongst”.

The landlord of the property, on Union Street, said: “I feel angry and disappointed with the thugs, especially the idiot with the hoover.”

In mitigation, the court heard Rogers was a “complex and vulnerable young man” who had grown up in care.

Tabitha Buck, defending, said the attack in Southport “had a significant effect on him” and he was “overwhelmed by distaste at what had occurred and his distaste at what he felt was a lack of reaction by the police."

She told the court there was “indirect racism at play there”.

Dozens of people have been arrested in connection to unrest in Middlesbrough.

Two others have been jailed for their part in the violence including one woman who pushed a burning bin into a police cordon.

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