Accused jailed for five years after court hears how police forced him to spit out his drugs.
Accused jailed for five years after court hears how police forced him to spit out his drugs.
CRAWLEY, England — This is the moment a drug dealer attempted to eat dozens of pills when stopped by UK police and is then forced to spit them out by officers.
The incident happened when suspect Kewbe Tomlinson was traveling along Balcombe Road in Crawley in the UK and was stopped by the Specialist Enforcement Unit (SEU) on Jan 6.
He was targeted by the unit because officers had information that the car was being used in the supply of drugs.
“This is an excellent example of teams within the force working together to bring offenders to justice and to keep our communities safe. The tactical options the SEU use allow us to obtain the best evidence and this with the dedicated and thorough investigative work by the West Sussex Community Investigation Team, resulted in Tomlinson pleading guilty to the offences,” said inspector Johnny Hartley from the SEU.
Tomlinson, of Pincott Road, Wimbledon, London, has now appeared in Hove Crown Court on charges of supplying heroin and crack cocaine and also possession of class A drugs with intent to supply, to which he pleaded guilty.
“The sentence imposed by the court demonstrates the seriousness of the offence and we will continue to tackle and target those who exploit the vulnerable and commit crime within Sussex,” he said.
In order to gain entry to the car and to preserve any evidence, officers broke the driver’s window and found 36-year-old Tomlinson trying to conceal drugs by swallowing them.
They were able to stop him, and he was forced to spit them out, whereupon he was arrested.
Police took him to the hospital to make sure that none of the drugs had been swallowed before he was arrested and taken into custody.
A search of the vehicle found 93 wraps of drugs containing crack cocaine and heroin with a street value of almost 2000 GBP ($2,755).
As per a study conducted in 2019/20 there were over 130 thousand seizures of cannabis in England and Wales, by far the most of any drug in that reporting year. Cocaine and heroin were the second and third most likely drug to be seized in that year, at 18.7 thousand and 8.7 thousand seizures respectively.
Another study says that London had 4684 drug seizures per million inhabitants in 2019/20, the highest of any region in England and Wales. North East England and East England had the second and third highest rates at 3454 and 3221 respectively.
(Edited by Vaibhav Vishwanath Pawar and Gaurab Dasgupta)
