An appeals court has found a Coquitlam RCMP undercover sting targeting a dial-a-dope operation did not amount to entrapment.
The ruling — released this week — stems from a September 2015 investigation by officers from the Coquitlam RCMP Drugs and Organized Crime Section after it received a tip from an anonymous informant through the Crime Stoppers hotline that a particular phone number and vehicle were being used in a cocaine delivery business.
An undercover officer called the number and when the accused, Cheung Wai Wallace Li, answered, the officer asked for “half of soft,” slang for 1/2 gram of cocaine. The officer arranged to meet the dealer in the parking lot of a supermarket at Coquitlam Centre mall. Half an hour later, the undercover officer met Li and bought from him 3/4 gram of powdered cocaine for $80.
That was just the beginning. Over the next several months, police bought drugs another 21 times, 16 of which were from Li.
When Li was finally arrested and the case went to court, the accused pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking cocaine but was granted a stay on the grounds of police entrapment. The trial judge agreed, reasoning in one instance that “…Nothing in the original tip was corroborated or linked by an external police investigation. While the police may have mere suspicion, this is not sufficient.”
But in the appeal decision, the judges found the entrapment ruling failed to consider the wider scope of the tip; that the police were able to identify the vehicle’s licence plate and link it to several dial-a-dope operations provided considerable weight to the tip, they noted in their ruling.
Li’s case will now be sent back to trial court where he will be sentenced.
