Drugs ring used homeless men as ‘foot-soldiers’ in Bloomsbury

Published: 08 July, 2010
by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS

FOUR men involved in a drug market supplying heroin and crack cocaine have begun prison sentences following an undercover operation by police in Bloomsbury.

The men were jailed at Blackfriars Crown Court on Friday after being covertly filmed at work in Gordon Square.

Three were long-term addicts who lived in homeless hostels near where the drugs were sold, and carried out “foot-soldier” roles in the drugs network to support their own habits. 

The leader, Adrian Thompson, was sentenced to eight years in jail for money laundering and possession of class A drugs with intent to supply. He was not a drug addict and lived what was described an “ostentatious” lifestyle in Balham, south London. Thompson, 23, was arrested in January after police stopped a car he was in – following months of surveillance – and found 500 wraps of heroin and crack cocaine on him.

The court was told he had been trying to turn his life around following release from prison on an identical charge in 2005, but had been made redundant from his uncle’s plastering firm. 

He had then “turned back to the lifestyle he knew as a young teenager” in an effort to provide money for his one-year-old son.

Jonathan Fox, 49, of the Parker Street hostel, was jailed for five years for his part in the drug ring. Fox, who has convictions dating back to 1987, was known as a “reloader”. 

As a middle man, he would lean through the window of Thompson’s Audi and collect the drugs in the morning before handing over the cash later.

David Gittens, 44, also of Parker Street hostel, played a similar role, taking over from Fox in late December last year. Gittens, who had been doing the job for only a matter of weeks before he was caught, was sentenced to more than four years in prison.

Lee Porter, 34, from St Mungo’s hostel in Endsleigh Gardens, was given a lesser sentence. 

He would collect the drugs from Gittens and Fox and then go on to the streets to sell them, being paid in heroin for his work. 

The court heard he was born an addict to his addicted mother and started taking class A drugs at the age of 11. During his time on remand his father and grandparents died and he pledged to move away from crime when released.

Judge Daniel Worsley described the operation as “sophisticated and highly organised”, providing more than 500 wraps of crack cocaine and heroin to addicts in Bloomsbury every two days or so, with “each bag containing its individual misery”. 

Porter was given an Asbo ordering him to stay out of Bloomsbury and other areas of Camden when he leaves prison in less than two years.