A thief broke into Nero’s and snatched the Poppy Appeal tin - just days before Remembrance Sunday.

When police arrested homeless David Gallagher in the Canterbury High Street coffee shop he said: “I just want to go back to prison.”

Judge Catherine Brown told the 49-year-old at Canterbury Crown Court: “This is a serious matter and the public would be rightly disgusted that this was only days before Remembrance Sunday.

“You, I’m sure, now realise what an insult that is to people who serve this country and for whom these collections are intended.”

The court heard Gallagher broke into the building through a rear window and rifled through the front counter pocketing cash from the tips jar and snatching the Royal British Legion collection tin.

CCTV recorded Gallagher fleeing the building in the early hours of November 8 and returning shortly afterwards to burgle the office.

Officers found the suspect in the act, holding a butter-knife and smelling of excrement, saying: “I just want to go back to prison,” prosecutor Eleanor Scott-Davies explained.

Officers found the thief to be in possession of £28 in change - he claimed it was money obtained from begging.

“Police observed he was very intoxicated and smelled of excrement,” Miss Scott-Davies added.

He pleaded guilty to burgling a commercial premises at a previous hearing.

Gallagher has a long history of crimes involving dishonesty.

With 50 convictions for 107 offences, the lions’ share consist of burglary and shoplifting - the most recent crime committed while on a conditional discharge.

Mitigating, Phil Rowley explained there had been significant gaps in his clients’ offending when he was off drink and drugs.

The barrister added Gallagher had “lost his way again without any means of supporting himself,” and is now hopeful to get on the straight and narrow again.

Gallagher, previously of Headcorn but currently of no fixed abode, remained placid and emotionless in the dock.

He could be seen nodding as Judge Brown told him to clean up his act before sentencing him to six months in prison.

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