Published: 02 February 2012
by RICHARD OSLEY

DRUG dealers from the “QC” gang who sold heroin and crack cocaine next to Gospel Oak schools, playgrounds and football pitches have been sentenced to a total of 13 years in prison.

Branded by Judge John Hillen as “miserably inadequate individuals”, the sentences were the culmination of a huge undercover police effort called “Operation Homerun”.

It involved five months of surveillance with undercover officers posing as drug addicts to buy increasing amounts of drugs in the Queen’s Crescent area.

Ten defendants appeared at Blackfriars Crown Court to hear their fate on Thursday and Friday after pleading guilty to a number of drug offences and robberies.

They were sentenced to a total of 13 years and four months in prison or young offenders institutions, depending on their ages.

Two others are due to be sentenced at a later date for the same offences.

The judge said the sentences he handed down reflected how members of the Queen’s Crescent gang, rather than a series of individuals, carried out the dealing in the area.

He said: “The case has been opened on the basis that each one of the defendants was at the relevant time a member or associate of the ‘QC’ Gang, a group of largely male persons who engaged in criminal activity.

That suggestion is entirely justified.”

The judge added: “It is clear from the defendants and the cases that come before this court that these are some immature young men, more often than not coming from difficult family backgrounds, and while they have been failed by the education system, find solace in their peers and from gangs which effectively act as a replacement family for them, certainly a support system.

“Such gangs are not to be confused with groups of professional criminals who commit organised crime.”

PC Rhos Cox, who has worked as an anti-social behaviour officer in the area for many years, told the court of his first-hand experience of the “damaging effect and misery this [drug dealing and use] has caused to this community.”

PC Cox said that the problem of drug dealing had got so bad it had “infested” the Queen’s Crescent area with deals taking place even as “mothers took their children to school”.

Large areas of local authority housing in the area had become hotspots for heroin and crack cocaine use, he said.

“Drug dealing and drug taking takes places throughout the day and throughout the night and we have corridors there that are used as toilets,” PC Cox told the court,

He added: “Drug users infest to common areas.

The blocks are covered in urine, people defecate in there, on numerous occasions their lifts have been shut down because it is not safe to use them.”

The Queen’s Crescent William Hill bookmakers was almost shut down due to the numbers of drug deals taking place inside, the court was told.

Fed up with the control the gang had on the streets of Queen’s Crescent, one local councillor cycled around “on his push-bike’ to confront youths acting in an anti-social way” but was simply “abused” by them and was forced to report the incidents to the police.

As well as paraphernalia littering the streets and intimidation, the court heard crime in the area rose due to the drug dealing and taking with “snatches” of mobile phones, car thefts and burglaries all linked to addicts in the area stealing to feed their habit.

The drug dealing gang was finally disturbed in July last year during a 200-strong police raid of the area where youths were arrested and later charged with the offences they had been recorded carrying out over previous months.

Jake McVicar, 22, who admitted 20 counts of supplying class A drugs, was jailed for four years.

His nephew, William Logie, 18, was handed a 32-month detention in a young offenders institution.

Leeroy Wilson Cole, 22, was given 20 months’ imprisonment, Jemal Harris, 22, received 20 months.

Mark Glover, 54, an addict who had introduced undercover police officers to members of the gang, was given an eight-month suspended sentence for 12 months.

Another 17-year-old was handed a two-year detention and training order.

All of the gang members also received anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos) banning them from associating with each other, owning an unregistered mobile phone and entering the Queen’s Crescent area.

Djo djo Idonteya, 18, who pleaded guilty to one count of supplying class A drugs, had his sentence delayed. Instead he will spend the next six months “on test” – proving to the judge he has changed his life.

James Legg, 18, and Myles LaPierre, 21, were each handed a 12-month suspended sentences because the judge was convinced that both men had made serious efforts to turn their lives around – and turn their backs on gang culture.

LaPierre was given a lenient sentence because he had managed to find full-time work as a mechanic’s apprentice. He was to carry out 120 hours of community service.

Judge Hillen added that all three would be “for the high jump”

if they appeared back
in front of him after breaking the conditions of their release.