LONDON — A tourist from Hawaii pleaded guilty Friday to punching two London police officers outside Buckingham Palace on Valentine’s Day.
LONDON — A tourist from Hawaii pleaded guilty Friday to punching two London police officers outside Buckingham Palace on Valentine’s Day.
A prosecutor said 36-year-old Ryan Robinson of Kahekili Highway asked the armed officers, “Do you know any jokes?” before punching one in the face and trying to grab his Taser on Wednesday.
When the second officer pointed his gun at Robinson and ordered him to stand still, Robinson knocked him to the ground, prosecutor Henry Fitch said. Robinson then pulled the two officers to their feet in “an extraordinary display of strength” and punched one of them again.
He said Robinson was heavily intoxicated and it took several other officers to restrain and arrest him.
Robinson, who appeared in court with a dirty shirt and bruised eye, admitted two counts of assaulting a police officer.
A judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court gave him an eight-week suspended sentence and ordered him to pay each victim 200 pounds ($280).
District Judge Margot Coleman told Robinson that “the fact that you were intoxicated at the time makes you the author of your own misfortunes.”
“It does not diminish the offense in any way,” she said. “If anything, it aggravates it.”
