(Image: North Yorkshire Police)
A drug dealer sent texts offering heroin and cocaine for sale directly to a police officer, York Crown Court heard.
Dakari Roy Brown, 25, sent the officer three more texts in the following week telling him what he had for sale and for how much, not realising that the recipient was not a drug user, said Rachael Landin, prosecuting.
He also answered questions about the deals and the person who had given him the officer’s number.
Brown was targeting York drug users and running the Larry drug line with four separate mobile phone numbers, said Ms Landin.
“This is the first time I have ever come across a dealer contacting police to sell Class A drugs, not realising it was a police officer you had contacted,” the Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris told Brown.
“You walked straight into it.
“I am told you are actually maturing. I am going to give you plenty of time to mature.”
He jailed Brown for five years and seven months, the fourth time in nine years Brown had been locked up for dealing in Class A drugs.
Brown, of Bulay Road, Huddersfield, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply heroin and conspiracy to supply cocaine, both between December 17, 2025, and September 11, 2026, and possessing criminal cash of £1,390, the proceeds of drug dealing and found by police when they raided his home.
The money was confiscated.
Brown committed the offences when on prison licence having been released partway through a 69-month prison sentence for supplying crack cocaine imposed at York Crown Court in 2023.
He had previously been given a 60-month prison sentence at Preston Crown Court in 2020, had convictions in 2018 and 2019 for dealing in Class A drugs and in 2017, when still a youth, was given a 12-month detention and training order at Leeds Youth Court for possessing Class A and Class B drugs with intent to supply to others.
The judge warned Brown that if he is convicted again of dealing in Class A drugs, he would be facing prison sentences of at least 10 years.
Solicitor advocate Kara Frith said he had been selling drugs to make money but had not made very much.
“His mitigation is really his guilty pleas,” she said.
“He realises he is wasting his life.”
Previously when in prison he had spent much of his time in isolation and rebelled against authority, but he was now wanting to improve himself while in prison so that he could get work when he is released and change his life around.
North Yorkshire Police’s Operation Sentry serious organised crime team was tasked with following up the leads Brown had inadvertently provided to the force.
They tracked Brown down to his home in Huddersfield which they raided on September 10.
He was arrested and they found two personal mobile phones, a deal line handset and two SIM cards in his bedroom.
A spokesman for the team said: “County lines drug dealers like Dakari Brown exploit some of the most vulnerable people in our communities to make as much money as possible.
“Unfortunately for them, the Operation Sentry team is relentless in the pursuit of organised criminals, and we will use all our powers and capability to detect and dismantle such illegal activity within York and North Yorkshire and across the policing borders as demonstrated in this case.”