Hells Angel gets year for trafficking

Jail time is necessary, but should be on the low end for a Hells Angels member convicted of offering to traffic cocaine, a Saskatoon provincial court judge has ruled.

Justice Grant Currie sentenced Robert Allen to 12 months Tuesday in Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench. In deciding the length of the sentence, he took into account the fact that no cocaine was produced, and that Allen pretended to go along with the plan because of his addiction, Currie said.

Allen, 36, offered to arrange a large cocaine deal between two Hells Angels associates in Ontario and Noel Harder, a drug dealer and member of the Fallen Saints motorcycle club who was secretly recording their conversations between September and December 2014.

Harder was working as a police agent in a drug and gun investigation targeting the Fallen Saints and Hells Angels.

Currie said both Allen and Harder were pretending to go along with the plan, but for different reasons. Allen was motivated to play along because Harder was supplying him with pills for his opioid addiction, Currie said in his oral decision.

During sentencing arguments earlier this month, Allen’s lawyer, Morris Bodnar, said the sentence should not include any jail time because Allen had no intention of arranging a cocaine deal with Harder. Bodnar said it was Harder who approached Allen about getting a kilogram of cocaine, and that Allen humoured him so that Harder would keep giving him pills.

Harder should be the one before the court for trafficking drugs to Allen, Bodnar argued, alleging Allen was “set up” by Harder, who police recruited to prey on his addiction.

“The criminal gets away, the non-criminal goes to jail,” Bodnar said outside the courthouse.

The Crown had argued for a five-year sentence, saying if the type of drug transaction that was discussed had actually taken place, the sentence could have been in the range of seven to 10 years.

“The judge says trafficking cocaine where nothing happened is worth a year in prison. I think most people would view that as a pretty significant penalty on the basis that nothing was ever going to happen,” Curliss said outside court.