A drug dealer has been jailed after trying and failing to discard crack cocaine on a park.
Newark officers spotted Levi Beckford shouting in the street while attending an unrelated incident.
Having approached an irate Beckford on Yorke Drive, neighbourhood officers started to suspect he could be up to no good.
These suspicions were heightened further, when the 23-year-old was searched and found with cash and burner phones on him.
While he didn’t have any in his possession, police believed he could be involved in drug dealing, so conducted further searches of the area.
Knowing Beckford had emerged from a woodland area near a play park just before they’d stopped him, the neighbourhood team went to look there.
Sure enough, they quickly discovered and recovered large amounts of Class A drugs that had been discarded underneath a tree, on 19 September last year.
Based on this, Beckford was arrested for drug offences and later charged.
Beckford, of no fixed address, would go on to plead guilty to possessing with intent to supply Class A drugs at a court hearing in January.
That was due to the strength of the case built up by the Newark neighbourhood policing team and the force’s dedicated drug focus desk (DFD), which supports drugs supply investigations.
Beckford returned to Nottingham Crown Court on Wednesday (4 March), where he was sentenced to three years and four months in prison.
Inspector Charlotte Ellam, District Commander for Newark and Sherwood, said:
“All the officers involved in this case deserve great credit for their role in securing this custodial sentence.
“Our neighbourhood policing team was in the right place at the right time to identify Levi Beckford was involved in drugs supply and then take action within minutes.
“We’re really pleased with this result, which followed some fantastic collaborative work between our neighbourhood officers and the DFD.
“By making use of the DFD’s dedicated resources, the investigative team were able to secure a charge and remand on the day, which ultimately led to the resulting guilty plea.
“Cracking down on drug activity has long been one of our key priorities in Newark, so it’s great to have been able to put a known offender behind bars.”
