Furious that his 14-year-old son had been buying cannabis, Cenydd Nickels vowed to bring the dealer to justice.
His anger was made worse by the fact his mother had recently been violently mugged for the sake of just £6 to buy drugs.
But when the 53-year-old tracked down the culprit and carted him to a police station, officers were not interested.
They let the suspect walk free...and put Mr Nickels in the dock instead.
Their decision triggered a five-month, £100,000 legal battle that ended only when the Crown Prosecution Service decided to drop the charges without explanation.
Mr Nickels had confronted the drug dealer in a ‘sting’ operation at a park, having been promised by police they would be there to make an arrest.
No officers arrived and – following a fight – Mr Nickels, who is a dog warden and junior rugby coach, put the younger man in the boot of his car and drove to a police station.
The station was closed so he telephoned officers who arrived 20 minutes later.
To Mr Nickels’s horror, they arrested him for assault – even though the dealer told them he did not wish to press charges.
The next day he was charged with kidnap and causing actual bodily harm.
That led to ten court appearances until, at Swansea Crown Court last month, prosecutors decided to offer no evidence and he was formally acquitted of both charges.
One of his neighbours in Ystradgynlais, near Swansea, said: ‘Cenydd is a pillar of our community.
‘He’s there for young people week in week out at the rugby club and is well known in the area for being a lovely guy.
'No one here will have a bad word to say about him. It’s a joke that he was arrested in the first place. What a waste of everyone’s time and money.’
Mr Nickels posted an emotional message on Facebook about his arrest in January.
In it he said his mother had been left black and blue by her mugging ordeal and needed hospital treatment, including stitches, for her injuries.
He added: ‘I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family, county councillors, community councillors, scout leaders and the people who have supported me over the past few weeks.
‘We have won the battle, but not the war over drugs in our community. We must stick together and keep on top of the drug dealers and report them to the police, so that they will always be looking over their shoulder in future.
The fact is this adult abducted a child by force AND put him in the boot of his car. This is outrageous behaviour.
ReplyDeleteI shouldn't matter even if the minor was selling heroin, no adult can be allowed to physically abduct a child, no matter what their excuse for doing so.
What if it was your child who was being sold heroin ? If the police won't do anything then you got to sort it out yourself otherwise society breaks down. Right now pedophiles are walking free after raping young children. Anybody touches my children will be disposed of without the police in a very painful and nasty way.
DeleteYeah right, stand back and do nothing, become an even weaker society, allow the crims to take advantage of the young and the elderly. Your sort of warped thinking is the same as the school that chastised a pupil for standing up for another that was about to be knifed. Lets get even more dumbed down.
DeleteMr. Nickels, did you learn anything?
ReplyDeletea perfect moment to learn something. If you don't learn to recognize when you are unfairly responding to one situation because of another, that just because one thing emotionally resembles another, it cannot be rationally made responsible --
if not that lesson --
-- well how about this one:
speak with your children about their actions. respect their experiences as coequal with, and as valid as, your own. not as occasion for them to be corrected. YOU do not see YOUR opinions as object lessons that they should correct... why should they see THEIRS as such?
why should anyone ever have to accept this -- much less (as is the case with many parents) accept it by default?
****remember that you teach each other****
to elucidate: an example.
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someone close to you disagreed with you about your own body, disagreed with you and your doctor's assessment of you needs? What if they thought it would really break the last straw if you should fill that new prescription?
what if because of this they arrange for this doctor to --- disappear, shall we say, and wake up somewhere where the laws back up their assessment, and put him behind bars for a long time --- as you realize this is really happening
---*ah* not a moment too soon your family, your friends arrange to have him rescued by your government (a benign force in this hypothesis). you sigh with relief.
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you work out the analogy.
no one human spirit is less equal. work with others to help them govern their lives. govern your own.
be well, and God bless you and yours.
Be seeing you.
Nancy state BS- verbal diarrhea
Deleteps whoever wrote the article was complicit n mixing the two issues up, from the way they took so little care with this:
ReplyDelete"Furious that his 14-year-old son had been buying cannabis, Cenydd Nickels vowed to bring the dealer to justice.
His anger was made worse by the fact his mother had recently been violently mugged for the sake of just £6 to buy drugs.
But when the 53-year-old tracked down the culprit and carted him to a police station, officers were not interested."
makes it sound like he tracked down the culprit of his mother's situation, not the "culprit" of his son's. hard to say culprit when the individual consents.
Be well.
The coach probably wouldn't be so uptight and violent if he tried cannabis.
ReplyDeletemaybe the police have a connection with local drug dealing, and do not approve of those who interfere in their business interests
ReplyDeleteAhh Common Purpose..punishing the victim, turning everything upside down in their role as change agents.
ReplyDeleteWhat did he expect? The police are lying wankers and don't give a fuck about the people. I hope he has learned no to trust these cunts. Anyone who has faith in the police needs to wake up and face reality.
ReplyDelete