A SENIOR judge issued a stark warning to Yardie gangs trying to create a market for crack cocaine in the North-East: "You will be caught and sentenced heavily."

Judge Peter Fox QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, revealed that there had been an attempt to bring crack from London to Teesside five years ago - an attempt foiled by the police and courts.

But Jamaican gangs were making renewed efforts to break into Teesside's lucrative drugs trade in recent months.

The judge was speaking at Teesside Crown Court as he imposed a six-year jail sentence on Raymond Simpson, 36, a Jamaican living in London, who was caught in Middlesbrough with crack cocaine last October.

The judge told him the message was aimed at such people as "yourself and your compatriots".

Simpson was arrested at an address in Longford Street, Middlesbrough, the day he drove from London with about 40 packages of crack hidden in a sock. He had already sold some for £1,200.

A jury found him guilty of possessing 25 grammes of crack cocaine with intent to supply it on October 2. The judge also ordered the forfeiture of a car used by Simpson, whose wife, a care assistant, travelled from their home in South Norwood, for the trial.

In his message to Simpson and London's Jamaican gangs, the judge said: "You should know that for several years, indeed more, this part of the country - while not entirely free of cocaine or crack cocaine - has suffered thankfully only slightly from that scourge.

"There have been other serious concerns, such as heroin, but that's a different consideration. So far as cocaine or crack cocaine is concerned, mercifully, until the last so many months, this area has been relatively free of this pernicious drug.

"About four or five years ago there was a concerted attempt from the London area to make a market for crack cocaine here in Middlesbrough. It was caught in the act, heavy sentences were passed and, in principle, the Court of Appeal backed them up and so, for the past few years, the position was as it had been before.

"But, as I say, in the past few months, there has been a renewed effort by such people as yourself and your compatriots to build a new market here for crack cocaine, so the message must go back to London, as it did before four or five years ago, that those who try to make a market for crack cocaine on Teesside will first of all be caught and second, will be sentenced heavily."