A FEMALE prisoner punched a woman police officer in the face through the hatchway of a cell.

Karen Coyne, 23, of Duke Street, Burnley, admitted assaulting PC Claire Castle. She also pleaded guilty to being drunk and disorderly, breaching the peace and failing to answer bail.

Coyne was ordered to pay her victim £50 compensation and fined £150 by Blackpool magistrates. She was also given a 12-month conditional discharge and bound over in the sum of £100 for 12 months.

Suzanne Sanders, prosecuting, said on Sunday, May 26 at 5.37pm police were called to Withnell Road, Blackpool, after getting a 999 call that a woman was lying in a garden screaming her head off. Officers calmed Coyne, who said she lived in a nearby flat.

They escorted her to the flat and she let herself in with a set of keys. But on speaking to a neighbour police found out Coyne no longer lived there.

When they returned to speak to her she picked up an electric heater and threw it. At Blackpool police station she headbutted the custody desk and was put in a cell. The prosecutor said: "PC Castle was on jail duties and checking on the welfare of the prisoners. When she opened the hatch to Coyne's cell the defendant punched her."

On another occasion, Coyne was drunk and pestering patrons at the Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, for money -- claiming she had been knocked down by a police car a few days before.

Paramedics were called and tended to her, but she was so abusive to the medics and police she was arrested.

Howard Green, defending, said his client, who had a serious personality disorder, had stopped taking her medication and had been in a confused state.

She was now taking her medication and doing well.