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‘Undercover cops joined addicts in drugs queue’
UNDERCOVER police mingled with queues of crack addicts waiting to score from a Camden Town drug gang, controlled by seven men and two women, a court has heard.
Wired for film footage and sound, the specialist “test purchase officers” bought heroin and cocaine spat from gang-members’ mouths as part of a three-month operation that ended with a dramatic raid on a drug-strewn Regent’s Park flat.
A jury at Wood Green Crown Court this week watched hours of CCTV footage tracking the movements of the alleged leader, known as Frostie, through the cafés, bus stops and estates of Camden as he conducted what the prosecution alleges is a conspiracy to supply class A drugs.
Artley Henry, 24, known as Frostie, from south London, denies the charge, as do his co-accused Wayne Mcleod, 20, and Syretta Elliott, 20, from south London, Matthew Nix, 39, from Boswell Street, Bloomsbury, and Conroy Washington Wilson, 37, of no fixed address.
Three men and a woman pleaded guilty to involvement in supplying drugs before the trial began.
Footage shows alleged deals in Kentish Town Road, the Ampthill estate, Oakley Square, Maiden Lane and off Prince of Wales Road.
But the gang returned time and again to Camden Road, dealing drugs at a bus stop outside Sainsbury’s supermarket and outside bookmakers William Hill and restaurant Woody’s Grill, the prosecution allege.
Speaking from behind a screen to protect his identity, an undercover officer codenamed John described how one deal had been set up at Kentish Town West station on March 8 last year.
He said: “There were three, maybe four, people, also drug users, waiting for Frostie. Even while we were waiting there were other people joining us.
“I saw ‘Sparrow’ [one of the accused who has pleaded guilty]. Some of the people went over to Sparrow and when they came back they said they were waiting for Frostie to come.
“Artley Henry got out of [a] taxi and started speaking to Sparrow. He led us, Artley Henry, and Sparrow at the front. We all trailed behind, like effectively a queue... [to] Talacre Road. There were probably about eight of us now waiting. We stood waiting and they went out of sight.
“Sparrow came back on his own and started to sell drugs from his mouth to all of us that were waiting. It was almost a competition to get the drugs first from Sparrow before they ran out. I asked for two wraps of crack and purchased them for £20. He spat them out from his mouth.”
Undercover footage of other alleged deals shows the gang’s ‘runners’ removing items from their mouths and exchanging them with what the prosecution claims are drug users, often in daylight as shoppers pass.
Prosecutor Brendan Morris told the jury that conspiracy to supply was an offence even if the accused did not directly sell drugs. He added: “Don’t think you have to touch the drugs to be guilty. If that were the case the Mr Big would always get off scot-free.”
Henry, Mcleod and Wilson were all in a flat in Waterhead, Regent’s Park estate, when it was raided by riot cops on March 27 last year and £3,000 of drugs were found, he added.
The trial continues. |
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