A vagrant who was repeatedly caught selling crack
A vagrant who was repeatedly caught selling crack cocaine outside a tube station was locked up for three-and-a-half years today.
(Fri)
On one occasion Stanley Edwards, 43, offered to get a lump of crack for 20 pounds – but he came back with only a tiny lump of cannabis resin wrapped in cling film.
Judge John Samuels QC, used street slang when he condemned him for ‘skanking’ – deceiving a victim during a drugs sale.
Nicholas Wood, prosecuting, said Edwards was caught four times supplying drugs outside Earls Court tube station, on February 1, 7, and 12, and 14 February this year.
On one occasion, Edwards led an undercover police officer to a man called Sam who spat a 57 milligram lump of crack into a cop’s hand.
In each case Edwards pocketed between pnds stlg 20 and 40 to obtain small amounts of drugs.
When arrested on February 27, Edwards initially denied he was a crack supplier to police.
Edwards, who lived in a burnt out car, told them: ‘No, I smoke too much crack.
If I’m a dealer I must be the poorest dealer around.
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Before he became a crack addict in recent times, St Lucian-born Edwards worked as a builder and lived in Stoke Poges, Bucks, Blackfriars Crown Court heard.
Judge Samuels said offering to supply one drug and returning with another ‘was effectively one of deception, commonly referred to in the jargon as ‘skanking’.
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The judge condemned the trade in crack which ‘leads not just to degradation of human beings but ultimately also leads to death.
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Edwards, of no fixed address, was sentenced to a total of three and a half years in total.
He had pleaded guilty to three counts of supplying a controlled drug of class A, one count of supplying a drug of class B and one count of offering to supply a class A drug.
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