Caribbean Cafe Boss Jailed After Drugs Raid

The boss of a notorious Caribbean café – arrested again after a another police raid, which caught over a dozen cannabis-smoking customers – has been jailed for fifty-one weeks.

Jamaican-born Anthony Lambert, 55, of Pankhurst Close, New Cross is the owner of popular ‘Nat’s Bake & Juice’ of 12 Brockley Cross, Brockley.

He pleaded guilty at Croydon Crown Court to allowing the premises to be used for smoking cannabis and possessing three small bags of the drug at his home address on June 4.

Police executing a search warrant at the café (pictured) discovered twelve to fifteen male customers in the smoke-filled basement with various amounts of cannabis found on them when searched.

Lambert, who confesses he “turned a blind eye” to the smoking was upstairs cooking at the time.

It was the second recent police raid on the café, which Lambert began running in 2006, and on October 20, last year he received a fifty-one week prison sentence, suspended for two years, at Woolwich Crown Court for an identical offence.

The court heard Lambert, who has other previous drug convictions, smokes cannabis for pain relief following a car accident and hernia injury picked up when employed years ago as a panel beater.

His back is partially paralysed and he spends £60 per week on cannabis to also alleviate headaches, stomach and hip pain.

Activating the suspended sentence in full the Recorder of Croydon Warwick McKinnon told Lambert: “Like it or not cannabis is unlawful in this country and it has been for a long time. Other pain relief remedies are available.

“Let this be a lesson to you. When you come out of prison get your brain in gear that cannabis is unlawful or you will just keep going back to prison.”

A fifty-one week concurrent prison sentence was passed for the new offence of allowing his premises to be used, with one month concurrent for possessing the three small bags of cannabis.

Lambert pleaded not guilty to possessing £3,000 in criminal property on June 4 and the prosecution did not proceed with the charge.

On September 28, 2006 seven arrests were made at the café, including possession with intent to supply crack cocaine, and a closure order was issued the same evening.

The premises were raided by the police’s Strategic Support Group, supported by Brockley Safer Neighbourhoods team after eight months of surveillance and intelligence gathering.