Drug traffickers on ‘bullet train’ to jail: Judge

Fentanyl dealers are on a ‘bullet train’ to prison, Justice Gethin Edward said as he sentenced another dealer recently in Simcoe’s Ontario Court.

“At the end of the day, people need to be aware that if you traffic in this poison, you’re going to one ultimate destination and that’s the penitentiary,” the judge told 37-year-old Miles Michael Ecker.

“People have to come to the realization there is only one sentence.”

Ecker was given a six-year sentence for his part in being caught in a Simcoe drug house with more than $20,000 worth of various drugs, including cocaine and fentanyl.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of fentanyl for trafficking,

Edward mused it would be a good exercise for federal prosecutors to examine the sentences for convicted dealers being sent to the penitentiary that are being handed down in Simcoe, Brantford and Cayuga.

“I’m averaging about one or two cases a week and my colleagues likely have a similar number.

“Maybe if people begin to see in real terms in the news a stark statement to the effect that 100 people in the tri-county area have been sent to the pen for possession for the purpose (of trafficking) it would start to wake people up to the fact this is not a good lifestyle.”

The judge was told Ecker was arrested after the Norfolk OPP got a search warrant for a home on Head Street in Simcoe.

When members of the Haldimand-Norfolk Street Crime Unit went into the home, they found fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, hydromorphone tablets, scales, packaging materials and multiple mobile phones.

Ecker, who is from Port Dover, was one of four people arrested.

Federal prosecutor, Jamie Pereira, and Ecker’s defense lawyer, Genevieve Eliany, proposed a sentence of six years, less the time Ecker had spent awaiting his trial.

The judge noted Ecker’s long and “unenviable” record for crime and Eliany agreed.

“It’s true, but his only prior charge for trafficking was for a small amount of marijuana in 2009,” she told Edward.

“What’s striking and most tragic in this case is he was doing really well. He had been clean for four-and-a-half years before this relapse back into the drug subculture and was close to gaining custody of his daughter.”

When Edward questioned how Ecker ended up in a drug house, Eliany said he was dating someone who was staying there.

The lawyer said her client is now on suboxone, used to treat opioid dependence and withdrawal, and that Ecker “knows how to be clean”

“I think he’ll be able to succeed.”

Edward agreed with the six-year sentence, giving Ecker credit for one year of time already served.

Ecker forfeited all the items found in the drug house, was ordered to supply his DNA to the national offenders databank and was placed on an order to own no weapons for the rest of his life.

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