One of the people snared in December's major drug sting will be spending the next 30 months in prison.
Dawna Cripps was sentenced Monday by Judge Jeffery Kalmakoff in Estevan provincial court after pleading guilty to two counts of trafficking cocaine earlier this year.
The 44-year-old was one of 24 Estevan residents arrested during a raid on several residences in December 2009. Dubbed Operation Flon, the raid included 39 officers from the Estevan Police Service and an RCMP task force and was the culmination of 10 months of investigation and undercover work.
It was that undercover work that led to the arrest of Cripps and her eventual incarceration.
In handing down his ruling, Kalmakoff noted that Cripps was approached by a pair of undercover officers at her place of work and asked if she knew where they could get cocaine. Cripps later sold the officers three grams of cocaine for $300 and informed them that she could get more on short notice.
Kalmakoff said Cripps' willingness to supply the officers with more cocaine and her extensive criminal record were two of the many aggravating factors he considered in arriving at his decision.
It was noted that Cripps had five previous convictions for drug related offences and was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiracy to traffic drugs in 1999. Kalmakoff added that in the pre-sentence report Cripps was considered a high risk to re-offend due in part to her substance abuse problem which she is apparently seeking help for.
Cripps also received a firearms prohibition for 10-years and will have to submit a DNA sample for the national registry.
