A drug dealer's luxury 4x4 vehicle is to be used by police - in their war against drugs.

A Crown Court judge ordered that the off road vehicle should be confiscated after its owner had made more than £50,000 from heroin.

Now the Vauxhall Frontera is to be handed over to North Yorkshire police drugs squad in their battle against drugs.

At Bradford Crown Court, jobless Richard Pollard, 27, was jailed for four years after it was heard he had been caught collecting heroin which had been buried in an embankment.

Prosecutor Jeremy Richardson said drugs squad officers had been tracking Pollard's activities and two days after a meeting with a man in Crosshills they caught him taking a quantity of heroin from a specially-dug hiding place in America Lane, Sutton-in-Craven.

During their investigation the officers also found an identical hiding place in Slippery Fold Lane, Oakworth, said Mr Richardson.

In total heroin with a street value of more than £20,000 was recovered by police and it was estimated that there was enough of the drug to make up over 2,000 individual wraps.

Pollard, of Stoney Street, Utley, Keighley, pleaded guilty to possessing the heroin with intent to supply on the basis that he was acting as a "warehouseman''.

He claimed that he had made no profit from his activities, but had received free heroin for himself and his girlfriend.

But Judge Gerald Coles QC was told Pollard had benefited by more than £50,000 from his involvement with drugs and he ordered that an L-registration Vauxhall Frontera he owned should be forfeited.

The vehicle will now be used by the North Yorkshire police drugs squad in their battle against drug trafficking.

Judge Coles said he was sentencing Pollard on the basis that he was not the main person in the operation but added: "You were a middle man who made profit out of your middle man operations and exercised a degree of ingenuity in finding hiding places to keep what was after all a substantial quantity of heroin."

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