News / Heroin supplier jailed following police sting
A MAN caught supplying heroin during a sting by undercover police officers has been jailed for five months.
John Smith, 50, of Lovers Loan, Lerwick, had previously admitted supplying around £60-worth of the class A drug at a town address between 12 and 16 September last year.
Sheriff Philip Mann rejected mitigation pleas made by Smith when he appeared for sentencing at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Wednesday.
Smith had claimed he acted out of sympathy with someone he thought was a fellow addict. But the sheriff said there were no circumstances to merit anything other than a custodial sentence.
Smith claimed he had been approached on the street by individuals – who it later transpired were undercover officers “Gary and Mel” – after collecting a prescription from a Lerwick chemist.
Believing the man he had spoken to was “suffering withdrawal symptoms from gear”, Smith said he had taken pity on him.
“I felt sorry for that guy,” he said. “He seemed like a decent fellow who was struggling.”
He initially supplied the man, free of charge, with a foil wrap of the drug which he had been keeping in his garage.
Smith later arranged to buy three bags of heroin worth £20 each and sold them, in two installments, to the police officers.
Procurator fiscal Duncan MacKenzie said that while Smith was operating “at the lower end of the scale”, he had “lied through [his] teeth” to the police – initially denying he had supplied the drug.
He had been caught as part of a targeted operation by officers who knew of his involvement in the local drug scene. MacKenzie poured scorn on the notion that it was “an unfortunate coincidence” that Smith had been approached by the officers.
Smith insisted he had made no commercial gain from the sale. Whether that was true or not, the fiscal said it was implausible that supplying the drug had been some “altruistic act”.
“This was a very specific operation, a complex operation, and targeted against specific individuals,” he said. “Mr Smith is not someone who was picked up randomly in the street.”
MacKenzie described Smith’s claim that he would not have sold heroin to any of his drug-using friends as “utterly incredible”.
Defence agent Tommy Allan said Smith had once been a hardworking man “before drugs got the better of him”.
He had made a “serious error of judgement” in supplying the drug and was ashamed of his behaviour.
Allan stressed that his client had not gained financially from his actions, and said he seemed to be “getting through” his own battle against addiction. He asked the court to consider “viable alternatives” to a prison term.
Sheriff Mann said he could accept Smith had not made any money from the drug deal. But he rejected the idea that it was a one-off given he had been willing to supply to strangers.
The sheriff sentenced Smith to five months behind bars, reduced from six months due to his guilty plea.
In December another man targeted as part of the same operation by Police Scotland’s organised crime and terrorism unit was jailed for three months for supplying heroin and diazepam.
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