One of the main organisers of anti-migrant marches in Kent has been jailed after being convicted of harassing Labour Party canvassers and a series of motoring offences.
Sam Turner, along with Faversham-based Harry Hilden, has been one of the key players in the anti-immigration demonstrations which have plagued Kent towns in the last year.
Threatening behaviour
Last week he pleaded guilty to using threatening and abusive behavior likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress towards Medway Council leader Cllr Vince Maple and Gillingham and Rainham MP Naushabah Khan while they were canvassing last February. He was fined £270.
He also pleaded guilty to driving while glued to his phone, driving while disqualified, driving without insurance, and speeding, all of which earned him a six-month jail sentence and a long driving ban.
But this is far from Turner’s first brush with the law. And it is certainly not the most colourful.
In fact, Sam Turner is best remembered in Medway for the time he robbed Gillingham Football Club of its safe.
Absurd performance
It was a performance so absurd that even the CCTV footage looked like a parody sketch: Turner, himself a Gillingham FC supporter, in full Gills home kit with scarf fluttering, pulling the club’s safe along the pavement at night, leaving a trail of evidence from the scene of the crime to his nearby home.
First he broke into the Club’s offices for booze. Then he returned for a lawnmower, cash, and car keys.
Then, finally, he came back for the club’s safe, which he dragged down several flights of stairs, gouging walls and leaving a trail so obvious even Scooby-Doo could have solved it.
You can watch it here:
Police followed the scrape marks in the road straight to his house, where the £2,500 safe was found in his garden, cracked open with an angle-grinder. He was handed a suspended two-year sentence.
Turner’s social media accounts reveal a man who appears to have swapped lager for late-night doom scrolling, and feature conspiracy theories, anti-Semitic ramblings, bizarre body-building selfies, and endless reposts of far-right-nonsense.
