Drug-dealing policewoman jailed

A disgraced Royal Parks policewoman secretly filmed dealing cocaine and ecstasy was today jailed for 18 months.

Linda O'Sullivan, 34, "besmirched" the force when she gave cocaine and ecstasy pills to a reporter posing as a stable girl, the court was told. The story was splashed on the front page of a Sunday tabloid newspaper a few days later in January 2000, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

O'Sullivan, who worked as a mounted policewoman in Richmond Park was befriended by reporter Nyra Mahmood, working undercover for the newspaper after it had been tipped off about the policewoman's involvement in drugs. The policewoman even helped Ms Mahmood get a job at the Royal Park Police's Holly Lodge stables. At a hen night in Kingston in January 2000 their talk turned to drugs.

Ms Mahmood implied she had used drugs. Michael Holland, prosecuting, said that when she also indicated she was having problems with her usual supplier, O'Sullivan told her "she could work something out".

Mr Holland said that Ms Mahmood later went to O'Sullivan's house and she secretly filmed her handing over three wraps of cocaine for £170. A few days later the reporter filmed O'Sullivan handing her three ecstasy tablets.

A few days after that, when O'Sullivanwas confronted by journalists from the Sunday Mirror, she replied: "You must be joking."

O'Sullivan was arrested on 2 February last year and was charged with drug-dealing offences last March.

The policewoman, who has since resigned from the force, initially denied the charges, but pleaded guilty to two counts of supplying a Class-A drug at a hearing last month. Two other counts of offering to supply cocaine were ordered to lie on the file.

Tony Chinn, in mitigation, said O'Sullivan was of previous good character and had been "a model police officer". He said that she had been a "vulnerable and lonely person" at the time of the offences.

But sentencing O'Sullivan to 18 months in jail for each of the two offences, to run concurrently, Judge Stephen Robbins said: "You were trusted by the public to uphold the law. Instead you involved yourself in dealing in these pernicious drugs.

"Drug dependency can and does cause untold misery for families. It also drives addicts to commit a substantial portion of the crime that your former colleagues spend a massive amount of time investigating."

O'Sullivan, of Well Street, Hackney, showed no emotion as she was led to the cells.