A crackdown on crime across County Durham in the run-up to Christmas has been hailed as successful by police.

Durham Constabulary's head of CID, Det Supt Ian Scott, revealed 271 men and women had been arrested under the high-profile Operation Bull's-eye.

In Darlington and Derwentside 54 arrests were made; in Chester-le-Street and Durham 48; in Wear and Tees 69; in Easington 32; in Sedgefield 14; and 54 were made by the Operations Division.

Additionally a further 20 people had been reported for alleged involvement in minor crimes.

Hundreds of beat officers, traffic police and detectives played key-roles in the 18-day operation. House burglars, drug dealers, thieves and thugs involved in town centre violence were their main target.

A string of initiatives, launched by each of the force's divisions, resulted in the recovery of almost £57,000 in property, mainly from the search of more than 160 premises.

Det Supt Scott said: "Valuable information on individual criminals and their patterns of behaviour was collected ahead of the start of Bull's-eye.

"That was followed up with the combined hard work of a great many people whose efforts made the operation the outstanding success we were convinced it would be.

"Between April and November recorded crime across the force fell again, this time from 32,676 to 29,619.

"The achievements of Bull's-eye during December have done much to build on the undoubted successes of the previous eight months."

During Bull's-eye's run, each division implemented its own plans to tackle local problems, especially drug-dealing and drug-related offending

Additionally police in Derwentside devised special tactics to combat the threat of post office robberies, tea-time burglars and town centre disorder; in Chester-le-Street and Durham police gave top priority to violent crime and the Wear and Tees division took on car thieves.