POLICEMEN WHO SOLD ECSTASY ARE SPARED JAIL

TWO policemen escaped with community service orders yesterday for supplying
Ecstasy tablets. A judge said they did not deserve to go to prison and he
condemned another officer who set them up and sold the story to a
newspaper.

A senior lawyer in the Crown Prosecution Service criticised the sentences.
"This is unthinkable," he said. "The usual sentence for supplying one or
two tablets of Ecstasy on a social basis is 12 to 15 months. These two men
were policemen ... They knew more than most the criminality of what they
were doing."

PC John Capello, 36, based at Paddington Green police station in West
London, and his friend, PC Keith Roberts, 27, were each sentenced to 200
hours' community service.

Judge George Bathurst Norman, who branded the drug a "killer", told them he
would have considered imprisonment if they had not pleaded guilty to a
crime that was engineered by PC Sean Hallewell.

Tudor Owen, for the prosecution, told Southwark Crown Court that Roberts
had extolled the virtues of taking Ecstasy to PC Hallewell. PC Hallewell,
who declined to try it, had already known that Capello was an Ecstasy user.

"PC Hallewell suspected that the officers would not only take Ecstasy but,
because of their apparent knowledge of the drugs culture, would supply it
if asked to do so." He added: "What Hallewell did next was totally wrong.
Instead of using proper channels, he contacted the News of the World."

PC Hallewell was paid an undisclosed sum for revealing the story and giving
his assistance. On August 25, 1996, the News of the World published an
article naming the two officers.

Capello later admitted to police selling PC Hallewell four tablets for #40
while Roberts sold him two for #20.

The judge told them: "You were effectively set up because there is not one
shred of evidence that either of you supplied drugs to anyone before you
supplied them to Hallewell." He added that the News of the World had
distorted the true picture and made the officers out to be major drug
dealers, which they were not.