Kyle Peter Green, 32, appeared in the County Court on Friday after pleading guilty to reckless conduct endangering serious injury, drug possession and committing an indictable offence while on bail.

Crown prosecutors previously told the court two police officers attended a Ballarat East address on June 27 last year after a stolen vehicle was spotted parked out the front.

Upon arrival, officers saw Green enter the driver's seat. The pair of officers parked the divisional van near the front of the stolen vehicle, around one metre away. One of the officers walked to the passenger side of the car Green was in, which the guilty man turned on, revving the engine loudly and ignoring police directions.

Green put his head down and drove the car out of the property, heading to nearby Spencer Street.

"You drove forward, out in the direction of (one officer) who feared he might be hit," Judge Frank Gucciardo said on Friday.

"The officer unholstered his firearm and pointed it at the windscreen, he told you to stop the car and turn the engine off, but you accelerated in his direction and passed by him, missing him by less than a metre."

When he was arrested the next month, police found heroin in Green's car.

Judge Gucciardo said the officer who Green drove towards would have felt "very frightened", with the man's behaviour "utterly unacceptable and deplorable".

He said while Green did not approach a significant speed when driving out of the property, the police officer's life was still put in danger.

The judge quoted a Court of Appeal ruling which stated courts have a "duty to spell out a message in the strongest terms that this type of attack on police officers doing no more than their duty will simply not be tolerated".

But the judge conceded the 32-year-old did have some guarded prospects of rehabilitation, in spite of his awful track record, where he'd spent "five or six years" in prison already for serious prior offending including reckless conduct and driving offences.

He said the man had experienced a difficult upbringing, with his alcoholic father incarcerated and his mother a drug user. The court heard Green started cannabis use at the age of 14, and many family members including his sister had died while serving prison terms.

Appearing in the dock in a dark-coloured button up shirt, Green asked the judge if he could be considered for a community corrections order (CCO) on his release rather than parole, as "no one is getting parole these days". Judge Gucciardo said the man's offending was too serious for a CCO.

Supporters of the guilty man told him to "stay strong" as he was led away and returned to the cells by uniform-clad police officers.

Green was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 14 months. He has already served 243 days of pre-sentence detention.

The headline of this article has been updated to clearly reflect the content of the story.