A STREET drinker who pulled the head off a live pigeon in public has avoided being subject to a new form of court control.

A district judge refused to make a court order aimed at curbing Desmond Ambrose Wassell's drunken behaviour which, said prosecutor Catriona Murdoch, included killing a bird.

York Magistrates Court heard that in 12 months up to October 2014, police three times made "Section 27" orders, to force Wassell to move on from where he was committing alcohol related crimes or anti-social behaviour and he had been sentenced to a total of 42 weeks in prison.

The court heard he has more than 100 convictions committed over 20 years and breached an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) 21 times before it expired in November 2014.

But when the CPS applied for the replacement for ASBOs, a criminal behaviour order, to be made against him, district judge Adrian Lower disagreed, saying the new type of order wouldn't help Wassell to stop offending.

"The fact is, I am afraid, Wassell will change when he wants to change," he said. "If he doesn't want to change, it is very likely he will simply carry on in the way he has carried on."

Wassell called out: "You are a very wise man, you are."

It was one of a series of interventions by Wassell, 40, which led the judge to expel him from court and to continue hearing the case in his absence.

For Wassell, Liam Hassan said: "I fully concede he is a nuisance in the town centre and historically has been."

Wassell was jobless, homeless, a street drinker addicted to alcohol and had a personality disorder.

He needed a multi-agency approach to solving his many needs, which he was starting to get. He had also started to slow down the rate at which he offended and had not been convicted of any offence since November 2014, when he was convicted of a public order offence, resisting a police officer and begging. Those offences led to the CBO application.

The judge said the police had power to arrest and charge Wassell without a CBO.

Had he made the order, it would have been the first in North Yorkshire and one of the first in the country, as they only became law in October last year. The maximum sentence for breaching a CBO is five years.

When the ASBO was made in November 2011, York Magistrates Court heard Wassell was the "most arrested" man in York, having been arrested 80 times in two years for offences including aggressively accosting tourists for money.