DRUG KINGPINS BEHIND BARS

The days of earning $300,000-a-month by overseeing a crack cocaine
distribution network on the streets of Vancouver are over for four Cape
Breton men.

The four, all from Glace Bay, are now behind bars in British Columbia after
pleading guilty last month to a host of trafficking and conspiracy charges
resulting from police investigations on both the west and east coasts.

Two of the men were described in court as the kingpins of a distribution
system that operated from the former Stadium Inn on Vancouver's eastside.

The majority of the sales were completed across the street in Victory
Square where shoppers could pretty much depend on regular hours being kept
by the organization's sellers - 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. The
gang allegedly earned as much as $10,000 per day.

Sentenced were Earl Stephen Seymour, 34, and his cousin, Kenneth Bradley
Seymour, 35, who were each sentenced to eight years in a federal prison.
With credit for time served on remand, the sentence was reduced to six years.

Stephen Seymour was also sentenced for his role in arranging for two other
men to fire bomb the home of the aunt and uncle of a regional police
officer in Glace Bay who participated in raiding the Seymour home.