The battle of Jericho

"I HAVEN'T even got time to go to the toilet - they're just pinging all the time," Jenny says, as her phone rings again. It's just gone 2pm and Operation Jericho is in full swing. In the first hour and a half, there have been four arrests, with more expected later.

The "pings" are the sightings of cars used by 60 of the most active drug dealers in the North-East. Today is the culmination of a six-week surveillance operation and a total of 79 officers have been deployed across the Durham, Northumbria and Cleveland force areas.

"We have put together a hit list of regular users of the main roads and our officers are out there to target these vehicles as they go by," says George. "They're strategically placed on the main arterial roads and they have the intelligence we provided for them. When these suspects are spotted, they're stopped and checked.

"Once a vehicle is stopped, we have CID officers, most of whom have extensive drug knowledge, who do the questioning and searching of vehicles, and we also have drugs dogs.

"This is all helping us to amass intelligence, and by the end we will know more than we did before. There are the arrests and seizures, but we're also trying to identify the main supply and distribution routes throughout the region."

George is head of operations for the Regional Drugs Intelligence Unit (RDIU), bringing together officers from all three North-East forces. Set up in April last year, its work is so sensitive that the six-strong team have agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. George is a pseudonym, as is Jenny, who is the team's researcher.

The unit's objective is to disrupt and reduce the supply of drugs in the region and its primary targets are the middle-ranking dealers, the warehousemen who operate as a link between the Mr Bigs of the criminal underworld, and the street-level dealers.

'These are the people who take orders from above but supply to the street level, and they're very much involved in the organisation of serious crime. If you tackle these people, then not only do you affect the major criminals, you also have a dramatic influence on what happens at street and estate level," says George.

The unit, set up with £500,000 from the Home Office, puts the three police forces in touch with around 20 other government agencies, from the Health and Safety Executive and the Vehicle Inspectorate, to Customs and Excise and the Immigration Service, pooling information about suspects and mounting joint operations.

This co-operation stems from the assumption that underpins the unit: that not only is much of the lower-level crime drugs related, as addicts steal to feed their habits, but that those who are involved in drugs dealing are also involved in other types of crime, from social security fraud to counterfeiting, smuggling to vehicle crime.

"Quite often a target for one of these agencies is a target for the other agencies," says George.

"There might be a drugs dealer and it might be that you are unable to capture them drugs dealing, but it might be that they're counterfeiting or a pimp, or laundering money, and there are other agencies which have different powers so we will attack them from different angles."

A dealer may have only one trusted driver, and targeting that driver, perhaps on vehicle offences, may force the dealer to drive themselves, giving the unit a greater change of arresting them. Or a suspect may have a haulage firm, and can be disrupted by a thorough examination from the Vehicle Inspectorate.

The unit also works closely with the Regional Asset Recovery Team, which works to identify assets which are the proceeds of crime, and then confiscates them after a successful prosecution.

"If there is one thing that is going to disrupt a major criminal, it is taking their assets away," says George. "In days gone by, we would just look at the enforcement issue; now financial investigation is part of the full inquiry."

The RDIU includes three analysts, one from each of the North-East forces, who are linked to their force databases, enabling them instantly to pool information on a suspect, working on the assumption that many of these medium-sized criminals operate across a large area.

And as well as information provided by beat officers and local CID, the unit acts on tip-offs from the public, perhaps of someone who has a luxurious lifestyle but no visible income, building up a profile of suspected drugs dealers, including where they buy their drugs, whether they deal from home or in a pub or club, and how they transport them. Later this month, the RDIU will launch its first direct appeal through Crimestoppers.

In the last ten months, the unit has been involved in 80 arrests and has seized £300,000 worth of drugs. Another £150,000 worth of assets have been identified as being the result of crime, and £150,000 worth of counterfeit goods have been recovered, including DVDs and CDs.

"Very rarely do we find people who are just drugs dealers," says George. "They often work on the principle of least effort, and whatever is handy and whatever is going to make money is all they're about.

"Our job is to make information into intelligence, to make it actionable so we can work on that information. It can be done by analysis of computer records, or criminal records, or it can be done by surveillance."

A recent operation involved a network of drugs dealers arrested in Cleveland, following an investigation over several months which identified the dealers, tracked their supply chains up the A19 and along the A66 into Durham and Northumbria.

"We identified that there was a particular house and a particular car that they were using, and when the arrests took place they were going out of that car and into that house," says George.

So far, similar groups have been set up in Merseyside, the West Midlands and the Welsh border, and the North-East team has been asked to detail its work for the Metropolitan Police, which is looking at following suit.

For Operation Jericho, a lengthy intelligence gathering has identified suspects, vehicles and routes, including the most accessible places to detain them. A police helicopter and the air support unit are on standby in case the suspects refuse to stop and there is a pursuit.

By the end of the day, there have been 16 arrests, several stolen vehicles recovered, as well as a number of weapons and a quantity of cash and drugs. Further arrests are likely as investigations continue.

"It is about disrupting the supply of drugs in this region, but that is not to say we will ignore anything else that comes up. By joining together the police and other agencies, you are amassing a huge amount of information, and you can collaborate using each other's powers and resources," says George.

"And when you add to that the fact we have extensive powers of financial investigation, it makes this particular unit very powerful. There is more than one way to skin a cat."