A MAN with mental health difficulties told police: “Good, now I will get a bed” when they arrested him at York Hospital, the city's magistrates heard.

Gary Maddison, 60, was sleeping in the waiting area of the hospital’s accident and emergency department when officers arrived at 7.15am on April 14, said Jane Chadwick, prosecuting.

Earlier, he had been so aggressive towards a nurse when she tried to waken him, they had called in police.

When he was re-awoken, Maddison was aggressive towards the officers and swore at them, said Mrs Chadwick.

He continued swearing at them as they told him about homeless accommodation in the city so they arrested him for a public order offence.

“Good, now I will get a bed,” he said. He was later released on bail to attend court and did not do so.

After he was arrested on a warrant, Maddison, currently at the Changing Lives hostel for the homeless on Union Street, York, pleaded guilty to the public order offence, not attending court, possessing amphetamine for his own use on Piccadilly, breaching a conditional discharge and being drunk and disorderly in the car park of the Peaseholm Centre for the homeless on April 28.

He was given a 12-month community order with 15 rehabilitative activity days and ordered to pay £85 statutory surcharge for those offences, plus others for which he had been on a conditional discharge.

For him, Craig Robertson said he suffered from schizophrenia. When he felt unwell, he went to the hospital. He was using amphetamine to self medicate himself.

The offences for which Maddison was on a conditional discharge were theft of a Red Bull can worth £2.49 from Whistleblower at York Railway Station, CDs from HMV in Coney Street, and possession of amphetamine in Coney Street, all committed on March 27.