A campaign to encourage people to inform on criminals has been launched across North Yorkshire.

Operation Ratcatcher is a joint initiative between North Yorkshire Police and Crime-stoppers and is designed to get people to contact Crimestoppers with information about offences and offenders.

It has been launched to coincide with the clocks going back, as there is more opportunity for criminals to strike when houses are empty during the long, dark evenings, and will run until March 31.

The Hambleton district commander of North Yorkshire Police, Chief Inspector Mark Davies, said: "The analogy of the ratcatcher is that if you had rats running about your home, you would call pest control, so if you have criminals in your area, you should call Crimestoppers.

"Ratcatcher is a way of heightening people's awareness of a number of issues and to give local people the opportunity to tell us about people committing crime in the area.

"Local information means local action, so that if we are told about things like burglaries and violent crime then we can act."

People are also being warned to tighten up their home security by using a timer on lights, to lock their front and back doors, and keeping car and door keys out of sight.

"These sorts of campaigns do work," said Chief Insp Dav-ies.

"We appealed for information about quite a nasty aggravated burglary in the Easingwold area and it was through information from the public that we made an arrest."

Operation Ratcatcher is being run in support of Operation Delivery, which was launched at the start of September to crack down on crime by shortening the time it took to bring offenders to justice.

Eight hundred people were arrested in the first month of that operation and officers are hoping that Operation Ratcatcher will have a similar effect.

Crimestoppers can be contacted on 0800 555111. People calling do not have to give their names and could qualify for a cash reward.