Crack addict jailed

THREATS of deportation hang over the head of a Jamaican-born crack addict who is beginning a jail sentence after appearing at Ipswich Crown Court.

Vincent Clarke pleaded guilty to two charges of possession of cocaine and possession of heroin with the intent to supply.

Ipswich Crown Court heard how the 27-year-old from London had travelled to Ipswich to meet a woman he had started seeing.

The crack addict was then introduced to a dealer who sold him the drugs.

When arrested he was found with eight cling film wraps of cocaine and five containing heroin. He also had £1235 on him.

Clarke claimed he was not aware that he was being given the heroin as well as the cocaine but made the decision to keep it and sell it on to fund his own habit.

Jamaican-born Clarke, who has been to prison for similar offences was deported after his last jail sentence. He went back to Jamaica then used false identification to get back to London claiming he wanted to see his children.

Judge John Devaux warned him that a similar fate would be waiting for him this time.

Judge Devaux said: "What makes this so serious is your previous record. You were deported and then obtained false identification to get back into the country."

Clarke was sentences to six months in prison for possessing over £250 of cocaine and 30 months for heroin worth about £100.

The sentences will run concurrently.

Clarke is not the first Jamaican dealer who was caught in Ipswich after moving to town from London.

On March 8, the Evening Star revealed how drug crime was gaining a harder edge although police stopped short of calling recent offenders 'Yardies'. Jamaican gangsters Fabian Barclay, 22, and Andrew Thomas, 25, both of no fixed abode, had their illegal drug trade stopped and were each jailed for five years.

In October 2001, heroin addict and London pusher Paul Dwyer was jailed for life for murdering Peter Brown in Henley Road after an argument over a drug deal.