A former police officer snared a persistent street drug dealer by fooling him into leaving his fingerprints on a milk bottle, Bradford Crown Court heard.
Ajaz Hussain made the mistake of hiding his cache of heroin and crack cocaine in bushes in the man’s Bradford garden.
The retired officer spotted him stashing the drugs and when Hussain, 26, of Little Lane, Girlington, came back minutes later and asked for water to top up his car radiator, he wiped a bottle from his home clean and handed it over.
The police were alerted and the retired officer handed over the drugs and the incriminating milk bottle.
Hussain, a third strike street drug dealer, was traced and arrested.
He pleaded guilty to possession of heroin and crack cocaine with intent to supply on January 8.
Hussain was brought to court from Leeds Prison yesterday and jailed for three years.
Prosecutor Charles Blatchford said Hussain had two previous convictions for street drug dealing.
In June last year, he was sentenced to 12 months in jail, suspended for two years, with supervision and a drug rehabilitation requirement.
He was seen by police officers in Girlington putting something in his mouth and he spat out two wraps of heroin and 15 wraps of cocaine. He had £1,250 in cash on him.
The January offences put him in breach of the suspended sentence.
Mr Blatchford said the package found by the former police officer contained 51 wraps of Class A drugs.
Hussain’s barrister, Richard Gioserano, said he had been having a difficult time on remand in prison and had been attacked by other inmates.
He had not chosen to drug deal for a third time, he had been threatened and put under duress by those higher up the chain.
Hussain was a vulnerable man who had made real attempts to rid himself of the world of drugs but had been forced back into it by others, the court heard.
Judge Colin Burn conceded that Hussain was now “an unwilling conscript” who had been seriously assaulted in prison because of his connections in Bradford.
But he was a persistent drug trafficker who had a conviction for possession of ammunition.