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The final three members of a Rochdale drug-dealing gang have been jailed for a total of 19 years after a painstaking three-year police operation.
The trio were sentenced at Bolton Crown Court, bringing the total number of convictions of Operation Perryville, an intelligence-led police operation targeting drug dealers in the town, to 31.
Police say all three were integral to a drug-dealing gang and had all pleaded guilty to class A drug-related offences at earlier hearings.
Mohammed Nashad Farid, 21, of Kensington Street, Rochdale, was jailed for nine years nine months for conspiracy to supply class A drugs and given two months for assaulting a police officer to run consecutively.
Mohammed Ramzan, 43, of Tweedale Street, Rochdale, was jailed for four years for conspiracy to supply class A drugs and given a further eight months for dangerous driving to run consecutively.
Dean Anthony Lignum, 21, of Withern, Heywood, was jailed for three years five months for conspiracy to supply class A drugs and sentenced to a further 14 months for possession with intent to supply to run consecutively.
Today's jailing of the three is the culmination of nearly three years work by officers to stop heroin and crack cocaine flooding the streets of Greater Manchester.
Intelligence from the community was compiled over several months, which resulted in a series of raids at 30 addresses in Milkstone and Deeplish in May 2009.
Following the operation – which police say prevented those arrested and convicted from dealing any more drugs – officers received new intelligence that other people connected to the original gang were still dealing drugs.
New inquiries led them to arrest Ramzan, Farid and Lignum. All three were convicted as a result of phone records, surveillance and drugs and drug paraphernalia that was found on them on arrest.
They were arrested in November 2009 and, following a short pursuit which Ramzan's dangerous driving conviction relates to, Farid punched and kicked the officer trying to arrest him.
Farid's attack on the officer was stopped by two members of the public who intervened and Judge Morris commended their actions in helping the plain clothes officer as he sentenced the offenders.
Detective Chief Inspector Alistair Mallen, based at Rochdale CID, said: "We are more than two years on from the original raids but today's result shows that our work does not stop when we knock through doors.
"These criminals carried on regardless of the fact that their associates had been locked up.
"Whether they thought police wouldn't be bothered about their activities because we had stopped the majority of the group or were simply arrogant enough to think we wouldn't find out about them, it was a mistake on their part.
"Greater Manchester Police wants to stop all criminals and officers in Rochdale wanted to stop this community suffering the misery created by drug dealing - it was not merely about the initial result."
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