London - British supermodel Naomi Campbell will have to take time off from the catwalk over the next 12 months after a court in London sentenced her to 200 hours community service Friday for assaulting police officers in a rage over lost luggage.
05/29/2008 - Naomi Campbell - Naomi Campbell Departing Heathrow Airport Police Station on May 29, 2008 - London Heathrow Airport Police Station - London, England © Solarpix / PR Photos
Campbell, 38, had earlier pleaded guilty to six charges of assault, harassment, disorderly conduct and abuse as her lawyer told Uxbridge Magistrates Court that she felt genuinely sorry 'to have behaved in the way she did.'
The court heard that the supermodel had screamed foul-mouthed abuse at the captain of a British Airways plane, hurled offensive words at the cabin crew and accused police officers of targeting her because she was black.
'She is incredibly hard-working and she will handle whatever she has got to do,' her spokesman Alan Edwards said after the ruling, which did not specify details of the tasks awaiting her.
In March 2007, Campbell spent five days mopping floors and scrubbing loos in New York where she was sentenced for injuring her housekeeper by hurling a mobile phone at her.
'She is very, very relieved that it's over, and that she has been treated fairly,' her spokesman said Friday.
Campbell, who could have been given a six-month jail term, was also ordered to pay fines totalling 2,300 pounds (4,600 dollars) as well as compensation to the two police officers she assaulted and the captain of the BA plane, Miles Sutherland.
'These offences are aggravated because they were committed in the confined space of an aircraft. Whilst we accept that the loss of your suitcase would have been stressful, your subsequent behaviour cannot be justified,' chairman of the magistrates' bench, Peter Yiacoumi,
Campbell has been banned from flying on BA since the incident on a flight bound for Los Angeles on April 3, when one of her bags went missing in the chaos surrounding the opening of Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow airport.
'She went berserk, thrashing her arms around uncontrollably,' the prosecution said of the incident which delayed take-off for several hours.
But Campbell's lawyer, Simon Nicholls, urged the court to take into account his client's 'good character,' and the fact that she did not have a previous conviction in Britain.
'It wasn't a situation where she had been drinking or looking for trouble,' said Nicholls.
The court heard that Campbell kicked one officer in the groin with her platform boots and spat another in the face.
When the officers tried to remove her from her 5,000-pound seat in the first class cabin, she 'became a deadweight and fell to the floor like a child.'
Campbell has a history of run-ins with the law on account of her fiery temper, which led US agents to drop her from their books as long as 15 years ago.
'To Whom It May Concern: Please be informed that we do not wish to represent Naomi Cmpbell any longer. No amount of money or prestige could further justify the abuse that has been imposed on our staff and clients,' her US agents Elite said in a fax in 1993.
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