POLICE seized drugs with a street value of more than £20,000 in raids on homes and a pub in the North-East.

Operation Verona involved 60 drugs squad officers and local police in East Durham, and followed months of intelligence gathering.

On Thursday night, 20 officers, backed up by sniffer dogs, raided the Prince Bishop pub, Shotton Colliery, where a man in his thirties, the only person in the pub, was arrested.

Three thousand tablets, thought to be Ecstasy, were seized and have been sent for analysis.

Other officers raided five council and private houses in Peterlee and Wheatley Hill, and arrested two men and a woman.

A small quantity of cocaine and cannabis was recovered