Drug users have been targeting Skipton to commit crime to fuel their addictions, a countywide police operation has revealed.

The picturesque market town accounted for more than a quarter of the shop thefts detected by police working on Operation Artery, a three-month campaign to crack down on drug abuse and associated crime.

The three-month operation carried out by North Yorkshire Police to disrupt the supply of illegal Drugs in the county resulted in a total of 340 dealers and users being arrested - with 14 in the Skipton area. Drugs - including heroin, crack cocaine and ecstasy - with a street value of £81,000 were netted and officers seized assets from dealers worth £53,000.

Officers working on the anti-drugs initiative solved 376 related crimes, recovering stolen property valued at more than £35,000. These included 150 shop thefts of which 40 were in Skipton and 89 in York.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire Police said: "The reason is that Skipton has nice shops and a market, and it's right next to a conurbation.People come from Bradford, Leeds and Keighley to shoplift and this shows that a proportion of them are committing those crimes to fuel drug use.

"It's not a major problem in that people in Skipton need be afraid of crazed drug addicts stumbling about, but the fact is there have been 40 cases of shop theft in a three-month period where there's evidence of a drugs connection."

But he added: "The figures also show that a large number of people have been caught. There are hundreds of people in prison to show that you can't just come into North Yorkshire to a place like Skipton, do a bit of thieving and then stroll back to wherever you came from.''

It was hoped CCTV, which is planned for Skipton, would help reduce crime there.

As a result of Operation Artery, 16.2g of heroin with a street value of more than £1,250, 3.1g of crack cocaine, 23 ecstasy tablets, 8g of amphetamine and 102g of cannabis were seized in Skipton.

And officers working also cleared up a burglary, two assaults and a car theft.

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