Taxi Driver Online

Drug-dealing taxi driver hid cocaine down his underpants

A taxi driver was caught with cocaine down his underpants after being spotted selling drugs outside a pub.

Derby Crown Court heard how Casey Johnson had stashed some of the class A substance in his pants and also left more bags of it in the police car that took him to the station.

But a judge slammed the “unacceptable” delay in bringing his two-and-a-half-year-old case to sentence during which time the 28-year-old defendant has “sorted himself out”.

Handing Johnson a two-year jail term, suspended for two years, Recorder William Harbage QC said: “There has been a considerable and unacceptable delay since you were arrested.

“Some of that delay may be your fault because when you were arrested you were not frank with the police and it seems you gave a false pin number to them for one of the phones they seized.

“But I am not satisfied all of the delay was down to you.

“Since then you have sorted your life out, reconciled with your partner and she has written a letter in support of you.

“You work as a self-employed taxi driver and she is a hairdresser and you have both been affected by the Covid pandemic.

“The delay has worked in your favour.”

Lisa Hardy, prosecuting, said police were alerted by members of the public that Johnson had been selling wraps of drugs outside the Green Dragon pub, in High Street, Dronfield, on June 2, 2018.

She said officers approached and searched him and found balloons, gas and bags containing traces of white power on him.

Miss Hardy said they arrested him and took him to Chesterfield police station where they found eight bags of the class A substance in the vehicle and more cocaine down his underpants.

She said: “The defendant was in possession of two mobile phones and a man bag which contained £415 in cash.

“He said that was birthday money which he had planned to spend later that night having a ‘bow out at a casino’.

“The phones were analysed and found to contain messages consistent that he had been supplying drugs for around a year.”

Miss Hardy said the prosecution accepted he was selling at a street level to friends and friends of friends.

Johnson, formerly of Royston Croft, Hackenthorpe, Sheffield, but who the hearing was told is now living with his partner at an address in Chesterfield not given to the court, pleaded guilty to supplying and possessing class A drugs.

Dale Harris, mitigating, said: “The defendant is 28 and is fundamentally a decent young man from a decent family.

“At the time of the offence he had moved out of the family home and slipped into recreational drug use.

“He started selling it to partly-fund his own use.”

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