Bristol fentanyl dealer faces 6 years in federal prison

ABristol mandescribed by prosecutors as a dangerous drug dealer wasscheduled to be sentenced Wednesday for fentanyl, but the hearing was delayed because of a technical glitch.

A federal judge in New Haven was prepared to sentence 38-year-old Elkie Crumpduring a virtual hearing at 2 p.m.

But Crump could not participate because the wifi connection from the Wyatt Federal Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where he is being held, failed. Technicians couldn’t restore it, so court officials plan to reschedule it.

Prosecutors want Judge Janet C. Hall to send Crump to prison for six and a half years. They argue that multiple prison terms haven’t stopped him from a pattern of drug dealing, and contend he’s a danger to society.

But Daniel Erwin, Crump’s public defender, wants a sentence of four to five years, arguing that this will be a heavy consequence for his crimes.

“Post release, Mr. Crump will have to deal with the reality that he will, almost certainly, be in his 40s, a multiple convicted felon, with few marketable skills,” Erwin told Hall in a memo.

Crump’s most recent arrest was March 3, 2020, which followed a long investigation by Bristol police and agents from a federal Drug Enforcement Administration task force in New Haven.

Undercover agents were able to buy fentanyl from Crump three times last winter, police said. At the time, Crump was splitting time between his mother’s West Hartford home and his girlfriend’s apartment in Bristol’s Cambridge Park housing complex.

Agents arrested him in West Hartford and found 14 grams of crack cocaine. Investigators who searched the Cambridge Park apartment found a 9 mmhandgun that he’d possessed.

Crump in September pleaded guilty to possessing fentanyl with intent to distribute and possessing crack cocaine with intent to sell. Crump was on parole from a previous drug conviction at the time, and prosecutors argue he deserves the maximum sentence because of his lengthy criminal record. Crump has been convicted of drug dealing in 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2017. In 2019, he was sentenced to nine months after leading Bristol police on a highspeed pursuit in a rented car.

All told, he served more than six years in prison for those crimes.

“None of these sentences has sufficed to deter Mr. Crump from further crime,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Reardon wrote in a memo to Hall.

“Based on Mr. Crump’s record over the last fifteen years, it is fair to say that he has consistently turned to narcotics sales for income when not incarcerated, while his record of legitimate employment has been (at best) sporadic,” Reardon wrote.

“Mr. Crump trafficked in a particularly pernicious narcotic and ... his record reflects a persistent pattern of unlawful conduct, particularly drug trafficking, across virtually his entire adult life,” Reardon wrote.

Erwin, however, contends that Crump needs job training as well as counseling on how to live in society.

“Throughout his nearly 40 years, Elkie Crump has been strained between the poles of criminality and his own ambition for a normal, law-abiding life,” Erwin wrote in a memo.

As a child, Crump saw his family devastated by drugs, Erwin wrote, and his parents essentially abandoned himat age 5. Crump grew up alienated in the homeofarelative, Erwin wrote.

“Elkie is an intelligent and hardworking family man who responded well to athletics as a youth and the rewards inherent in legitimate employment as an adult,” Erwin said. “But the forces that shaped him and the challenges presented him in adult life were difficult.”

Erwin assured Hall that Crump wants a different life in the future.

“Mr. Crump has made poor choices; yet muchoflife has left him with only poor choices to make,” Erwin wrote.

Reardon, however, argues that Crump’s childhood background is a reason for a tougher sentence.

“Because of his experiences, Mr. Crump became acutely aware of the destructive effects of drug trafficking on users, their families, and their communities,” Reardon wrote. “In deciding to sell drugs anyway, he knowingly inflicted on his customers and their loved ones the same grief that marked his own past.”