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Entrapment: Police criticised after drugs case |
A DRUG user who supplied undercover cops with heroin has won his freedom after a judge slammed police.
| John Jenkins, 34, was locked up following Operation Farenheit after giving drugs to two officers purporting to be users.
But Burnley Crown Court heard he had not been the officers' target, had been asked to get drugs for them and the dealer who supplied heroin to him was not prosecuted. 
Police cooking up a fix up?
| | This prompted his barrister to say Operation Farenheit had "not been so hot".
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The court was told Jenkins, who had given the officers three lots of drugs had refused a fourth time as he was trying to kick his habit.
He had committed the offences in January last year, but had not been arrested until the end of August, by which time he was subject to a community order and was winning his drugs battle. Jenkins had been behind bars on remand 127 days.
The defendant, of Regent Street, Nelson, admitted three counts of supplying heroin on January 10, 11 and 16, 2007.
He was given 52 weeks in jail, suspended for two years, with a 12 month drug rehabilitation requirement and 18 months supervision.
Sentencing, Judge Beverley Lunt told the defendant those who supplied drugs to others had to expect jail but the case was unusual as Jenkins had not been the target of the operation and was not really a street dealer.
Judge Lunt said the delay in the defendant being arrested was "intolerable and inexcusable," for someone at his level of supplying and had resulted in him being in custody four months.
She added the person "higher up the ladder," had not been prosecuted for dealing. Judge Lunt went on :" He has apparently got off scot free which I find astonishing."
David Macro, prosecuting, told the court two officers went to Giles Street in Nelson, looking for two men who had numbers for drugs suppliers in the area.
Jenkins was there and told them to come back later. The officers returned later, the defendant said he was going to "score," and agreed to sort the officers out.
The prosecutor said Jenkins was arrested at the end of the operation on August 29.
Philip Holden, defending, claimed it seemed the police had gone about Operation Farenheit in a rather different way than they would have gone about Operation Nimrod, another undercover operation.
Mr Holden said for some reason best known to themselves, police had targeted drug users as a mechanism to get to drug suppliers. Jenkins agreed, whilst getting his own small supply of drugs, to help the officers and no crime would have been committed but for the actions of the police.
Mr Holden said Jenkins was in no way, shape or form a drugs dealer and could have claimed entrapment, but he wanted to enter his pleas and know his fate.
| http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk
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