A man who was caught by British Transport Police carrying heroin and cannabis outside Clapham Junction station has been jailed for more than five years.

At Inner London Crown Court on Wednesday, 26 June, Dexter Sharpe aged 38 of Timsbury Walk, Wandsworth in South London, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply class A drugs and possession of cannabis and was sentenced to five years and six months in jail.

The court heard that on Tuesday, 26 July 2022, British Transport Police officers stopped and detained Sharpe outside Clapham Junction station after he was caught smoking a joint and detained for a search.

During their search of Sharpe, officers found he was carrying a mobile phone, more than £2,000 in cash, and 25 wraps of a suspicious substance in his backpack.

After examination, the suspicious substance turned out to be heroin worth more than £500.

Sharpe was then arrested, and an amount of cannabis was found among his belongings while he was in custody.

During a police interview, Sharpe claimed the phone, cash, and heroin did not belong to him, but he refused to explain how he came to be carrying them.

Sharpe’s sentence reflects the severity of his crime and how serious the courts regard such offending.

Earlier this month, a 19-year-old man was jailed for more than three years for carrying a heroin and cocaine, and a police baton, and in March a man was jailed for a year after he had been caught with a large laundry bag containing vacuum-packed cannabis packages with a street value of £160,000.

Drugs are a blight on communities and this is yet another example of our intervention removing more drugs that were destined for the streets.

Anyone involved in the transportation of drugs on the rail network should beware – we have eyes everywhere – you will be caught and face the consequences.

Investigating officer DC Emma Martin