TOP PLYMOUTH JUDGE SAYS 70 PER CENT OF CITY'S CRIME IS DRUG RELATED

NEARLY 70 per cent of crimes dealt with at Plymouth Crown Court are
drug-related, a top judge has revealed.

Judge Francis Gilbert QC told a jury: "You have seen the enormous
damage which heroin can do to those who are addicted to it.

"Drugs are a real problem in this city.

"Approaching 70 per cent of the cases I deal with in this court are
drug-related - it's a very real problem."

Judge Gilbert said that drug-related offences included supply and
possession as well as crimes committed to buy drugs, such as theft,
robbery, burglary and prostitution.

He said dealers fighting over territory also committed assaults.

Judge Gilbert was speaking out after the jury of six men and six
women took just an hour and a half to convict Philip Dinner
unanimously of two charges of supplying heroin.

The jury then heard that Dinner, aged 49 and of King Street,
Stonehouse, was jailed for six years in 1991 for supplying heroin and
amphetamine and for 42 months in 2004 for selling heroin to
undercover officers in Old Town Street in the city centre.

Judge Gilbert said he had to sentence Dinner to the minimum 'three
strikes' tariff of seven years in jail because it was his third
offence of dealing class A drugs.

During the trial, the court heard that in 2009, as part of Devon and
Cornwall Police's Operation Bugatti targeting street heroin dealers
in Plymouth, Dinner was arrested.

He was the shadowy figure supplying Tracey McGowan, who in turn
supplied heroin to undercover officers 'Peter' and 'Desmond' on
January 27 and 28.

Prosecutor Kelly Scrivener compared heroin dealers to rats running
around the streets of the city.

But Judge Gilbert said he would not go that far, and even the dealers
were human beings.

Dinner, who told the court he had been a heroin addict for 20 years,
will serve half of his seven-year sentence, less 496 days spent in
jail on remand, before being released on licence.

Detective Chief Inspector Dave Beer, Plymouth crime manager for Devon
and Cornwall Police, said: "We fully recognise the impact
drug-related crime has on victims and neighbourhoods, which is why we
put significant resources into working with our partners at the
council, the health service and the voluntary sector, to really get
down to the root of the problem, focusing on the causes of these crimes.

"A multi-agency, street-level up approach tackles drug-related crime
through the integrated Offender Management Team, called Seven-to-One,
which has contributed to crime levels dropping in Plymouth by four
per cent over the past year.

"The idea behind such an approach is to work with drug users to break
their addiction and their need to commit crime to feed that addiction.

"Those who choose not to undertake such support run the risk of being
targeted by intelligence-led operations leading to the conviction of
people like Mr Dinner."