A criminal wholesaler has been handed a prison sentence for supplying drugs to gang members who sought to set up shop on the streets of Carlisle.
At the city’s crown court last month, four men from in and around the Greater Manchester area received jail terms ranging from 27 months to five years for conspiring to supply crack cocaine.
Despite making painstaking plans over several days to peddle the drug to Carlisle addicts, the quartet were busted within an hour of starting their illegal enterprise on January 23 this year.
Unbeknown to the four criminals, police officers from the Cumbria and Merseyside forces were involved in a joint operation to target travelling dealers in Carlisle on that day.
After police saw a suspected drug deal being carried out from a BMW with cloned number plates on a residential street off London Road, the four were rounded up and arrested, despite initially fleeing.
A fifth man, 29-year-old Kyle Dooley, was sentenced at Carlisle Crown Court today after he admitted possessing cocaine, heroin and cannabis with intent to supply.
Police had raided a flat in Manchester used by Dooley on January 27, recovering almost half a kilo of drugs from an air fryer, along with bulking agents and weighing scales.
A prosecutor said Dooley had stockpiled drugs and supplied them in street level form to others — including to members of the gang busted in Carlisle.
The court heard of Dooley’s difficult upbringing, him becoming reliant on cannabis and then turning to drug supply after falling into debt.
“It is a relatively amateurish operation,” said his barrister, Peter Doran.
Judge Michael Fanning imposed a total prison sentence of six years, seven months.
“You were engaged in the wholesale peddling of drugs,” the judge told Dooley, of Evanton Walk, Manchester.
“You are effectively the leader of your gang of one — buying and selling on a commercial scale. You have the links to others.”
