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Home Folkestone News Article
A man who threatened to shoot Kent police officers because he believed one was having an affair with his wife, could be facing jail.
Daniel Parkes ordered a 999 call handler to message one officer to tell him he knew who he was and that he wanted to shoot him.
He told the call handler to tell the officer: “Now I know who you are, I want to put a bullet behind your ear.”
As a result, PC Scott Burn was temporarily removed from duty while armed police guarded his family.
The 44 year-old told another 999 operator he was “going to shoot” PC Adam King.
The officer was subsequently warned to take extra precautions and be “hyper vigilant”.
Parkes was detained in Malaga, Spain, last year, after a European Arrest Warrant was issued, and denied making threats to kill in 2013.
But yesterday he was convicted at Canterbury Crown Court following a trial.
Parkes claimed police targeted him in a three-year campaign to ruin his life after he suspected his partner of sleeping with a fellow PC - something she has always denied.
Neither PC Adam King or Scott Burn were named by Parkes as the PC who his partner was allegedly having an affair with.
Representing himself, Parkes told jurors he was stopped 27 times, unfairly arrested on six or seven occasions, had paint thrown over his truck and was threatened with violence, as officers set out to “destroy (his) life.”
“Those police tortured me, my life became an absolute disaster,” he added.
He claimed he was too drunk to be taken seriously when making the threats to kill from a bar in Spain and attended a police station voluntarily when he became aware of the arrest warrant.
“One day I was in a pub and I got proper drunk and I don’t even remember the phone call, but all my heart, I didn’t intend anybody to be hurt.
“I was just full drunk and did something stupid.”
But both his victims told the court they took the threats seriously, as did Kent Police.
PC Burn explained he was ordered back to headquarters, his wife was taken out of work and armed police raced to guard his children's school.
Prosecutor Vivian Walters told Parkes: “The reality is, you knew full well why you made those calls, and that is because you wanted to make the call-handlers fear you were going to kill these people.”
Ms Walters explained Parkes had waged a one-man vendetta against Kent Police since 2011, erupting in threats to kill.
After dumping tonnes of soil outside Folkestone Police Station he was handed a conditional discharge.
"You wanted to make the call-handlers fear you were going to kill these people...”
He was then convicted in 2012 of sending seven malicious emails to a DC, with one reading: “(I’m) going to whack you.”
Parkes then went on to breach a court order by contacting the same DC.
When Parkes claimed he was too intoxicated to make proper threats, she added: “(Parkes) was quite capable of making the calls, to contact direct inquiries, to call the police, to make three separate calls, he made coherent conversation with the operators, he told a series of lies designed to achieve his aims.”
Parkes, formerly from Belfast, but who is thought to have been living in a truck in Kent at the time of the offences, was was detained in Malaga last September after Kent Police secured a European Arrest Warrant.
He was charged with the offences but had previously failed to appear at Folkestone Magistrates’ Court in July 2015.
The jury returned two unanimous verdicts and Parkes, of no fixed abode and he will be sentenced later today.
