Police raid home on exclusive Darras Hall estate near Newcastle (From The Northern Echo)

Police raid home on exclusive Darras Hall estate near Newcastle

10:40pm Thursday 9th July 2009 in

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POLICE raided the plush North-East home of a suspected drug dealer thought to be behind a £1.2 drug ring.

The alleged ringleader of the large-scale cannabis operation was led away in handcuffs from his £750,000 home on the exclusive Darras Hall estate near Newcastle.

He lives just a short distance from former England and Newcastle United hero Alan's Shearer home.

He was one of 20 people arrested today as police staged a synchronized series of raids on Tyneside targeting Far Eastern villains co-ordinating large-scale cannabis production across the region.

Detective Superintendent Peter Farrell, who led the operation, said: "The wholesale cultivation of cannabis is closely linked to organised crime and we are committed to disrupting these groups wherever they operate and ultimately to drive them out of Northumbria.

"Our aim is to clear the area of cannabis farms and demonstrate to criminals that we will not tolerate them in our neighbourhoods."

A total of 11 addresses linked to alleged cannabis crime barons were targeted.

Five were said to be so-called 'barracks' used by the gangmasters behind the drug farms, and the other six were the farms themselves.

As well as the luxury cottage on Runnymede Road, Darras Hall, officers swooped on two £400,000 houses in Warkworth Woods on Gosforth's Great Park, a house in Meldon Terrace, Heaton, two in Sydney Grove in Fenham, three in nearby Brighton Grove, one in Chestnut Avenue, Cowgate, and one in Sycamore Grove in Springwell, Gateshead.

The operation, codenamed Attero, was led by Northumbria Police's newly-created specialist squad, the Total Policing Task Force.