The former poster-boy of an anti-street crime campaign has been locked-up today after staying out of trouble for over a decade, when suspicious police found him loitering with a kitchen knife.
Graphic artist Janni Oswald, 30, of Victoria Road, Finsbury Park, North London was sent to a secure psychiatric hospital after pleading guilty to possessing a bladed article in nearby Station Place on September 15.
As a teenage tearaway Oswald confessed to hundreds of muggings to finance his cannabis habit, which began as an 11 year-old and he has convictions for grievous bodily harm, with intent; attempted robbery and affray.
In 2001 he fronted the Islington Crime Reduction Partnership’s “Be Aware, Street Robbers” campaign and designed posters distributed throughout the borough, vowing he had turned his back on crime.
Blackfriars Crown Court heard police near Finsbury Park Station searched Oswald at 5:30pm after spotting him loitering for around thirty minutes and a kitchen knife was found in his coat pocket.
He was charged and remanded in custody to Pentonville Prison.
Oswald was under a court-imposed supervision order at the time after police found him with two kitchen knives when arrested for throwing a brick through a neighbour’s window.
The court had made an interim hospital order on October 15, sending Oswald to the secure unit at Chase Farm Hospital, where he received treatment for schizophrenia, delusions and hallucinations.
Oswald claimed he carried the knife because of “dangerous people in the world” and expressed fears about the Chinese military and plotters planning to rob the British government.
“It is an alarming offence, but the knife was not used anybody or produced to threaten anybody,” announced Judge Daniel Worsley. “Knives are very frightening things for people to carry.”
The judge made a Section 37 hospital order under the Mental Health Act, returning Oswald to Chase Farm Hospital for continuing psychiatric treatment.
Doctors can apply for the order to be lifted once they feel treatment has been successful.
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