A MAN is today a registered sex offender because he got very drunk and confronted police officers, York magistrates heard.

David Shaffi, 37, had been urinating inside a police van and officers had objected, said Martin Butterworth, prosecuting.

He had then described what he was going to do, exposed himself and performed a sex act in front of a female police officer.

Shaffi was jailed for 20 weeks for indecent exposure in April.

He was also put on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.

His solicitor Craig Robertson said Shaffi’s conviction for a sex offence had adversely affected his mental health because of the kind of problems that anyone described as a sex offender encountered in daily life.

He was known as a sex offender but hadn’t committed the type of offence usually associated with sex offenders, said Mr Robertson.

“He just got himself very drunk,” the solicitor said about the incident in a police van.

“But it is a matter of record that he cannot get away from, that he will be on the sex offenders’ register for the next seven years.

The 37-year-old was back in court because his actions when on post-sentence supervision following his release partway through his prison sentence.

Mr Butterworth said as a registered sex offender, Shaffi had to tell police where he lived.

On November 16, he had told York police that he didn’t have a fixed address. By doing that, he put himself under an obligation to report to the police every seven days.

But he failed to attend a police station on November 23 and November 30.

He was arrested shortly afterwards at an address in central York.

Shaffi pleaded guilty to failure to comply with the requirements of the sex offenders’ register.

He was fined £80 and ordered to pay £85 prosecution costs and a £32 statutory surcharge.

Mr Robertson said Shaffi had not been sure that he could live at the address where he was arrested on November 16, so had told police he was of no fixed address.

Since then he had been told he could use the address. If he had formally told police he was living there, he wouldn’t have been arrested, the court heard. Police had known where he was. 

Shaffi had been diagnosed with anxiety while in prison and prescribed medication, the court was told.

On his release, he had registered with a GP but had not been taking his medication.