A “BRAVE” police officer disarmed a paedophile who had a large knife as he was being arrested.

Michael Harley ran into his kitchen and grabbed the weapon from a knife block before Connor Edmunds tackled him.

The officer suffered a deep cut to his little finger during the tussle in Blackwood last month.

He needed treatment at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr in Ystrad Mynach for a 1.5cm to 2cm wound.

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Harley, 36, was being arrested on suspicion of being in breach of a sexual harm prevention order when he assaulted his victim.

He admitted unlawful wounding and breaching the order after police found in his home two mobile phones he hadn’t registered.

They also discovered that the convicted sex offender had further breached the order by deleting a Snapchat account and had hid his internet search history.

Prosecutor Clare Wilks told Swansea Crown Court that the defendant committed “almost identical” offences for which he received a suspended prison sentence last year.

On that occasion Harley had cut another police officer with a knife.

Jeffrey Jones representing him asked the judge to give his client credit for his early guilty pleas.

His barrister added that the defendant has learning difficulties and suffers from anxiety and depression.

Mr Jones said the officer in the latest incident had acted “bravely”.

Recorder David Harris told Harley: “As you were being arrested you began to charge around your home.

“You were shouting and you ran into the kitchen in the property and you said that your head was going.

“One of the officers followed you and he saw that you grabbed hold of a bread knife which had a serrated blade. “

The judge added; “It appeared to the officer that you were either going to injure yourself with that knife or injure him by using it as a weapon against him.

“He was standing behind you at the time and he felt it necessary, understandably so, to intervene and disarm you of that knife.

“And that's what he did and he was only able to do so by holding the blade of the knife and in doing so he sustained a laceration to a little finger.”

Harley, of Cefn Fforest Avenue, Cefn Fforest, was jailed for 29 months.