Police give drugs cash to charities
03 Dec 2009
Police have handed over more than £14,000 which they seized from drugs criminals to four local charities.
The money was collected through the sale of the gang’s car and from cash inside it during an arrest operation in Coleraine in October 2007.
Four charities – the Samaritans in Coleraine, the Hope Centre in Ballymena, NICAS in Belfast and the Northern Ireland Cancer Fund for Children – received £3,683.30 each from police at a presentation ceremony in Ballymena today.
The officer in charge of the police operation, Detective Inspector Peter Moore from PSNI’s Organised Crime Branch, explained the background to the unusual donation:
“Officers mounted an intelligence-led operation in Coleraine back in October 2007 as a result of which three men were arrested, cannabis with a street value of £50,000 was seized and a large amount of cash recovered.
“Earlier this year, three men received custodial and probation sentences amounting to more than 12 years. In addition, the trial judge, His Honour Judge David Smyth QC, ordered that the money and property seized should be confiscated and split between four charities. We are delighted to be in a position to implement that ruling.”
Two of the charities are well known - the Samaritans for providing confidential emotional support and the Northern Ireland Cancer Fund for Children in caring for children and young people with cancer. The other two voluntary groups – the Hope Centre in Ballymena and NICAS in Belfast – are alcohol and drug abuse projects.
Detective Inspector Moore said: “Four local charities which do a lot of good work with limited resources are going to benefit from this ruling. Two of them are directly involved in working with people who are victims of substance abuse – that’s a welcome bonus for them from a very unlikely source.
“These donations also send another strong message to drugs gangs that we will take all legal steps to deprive them of their ill-gotten gains. We normally say that no one should benefit from the drugs trade but in this case, it’s nice to make a very worthy exception.”
