THE end o0f a large-scale Merseyside police drugs investigation in Wirral has been marked with the jailing of a Kirkdale man.

The sentencing of Stephen Adlington brings the total jail sentence imposed by Liverpool Crown Court on the heroin dealers caught by Operation Trojan Two to over 89 years.

Adlington, aged 25, of Bradewell Street, was arrested after a police sting which involved drug pushers being secretly filmed when they arrived on various occasions to sell drugs at a Birkenhead flat rented by under-cover police officers.

A total of 24 men were charged as a result of the investigation and all of them eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell drugs.

Det Sgt Phil Hastain said after the hearing that the operation had been jointly carried out by plain clothes police officers from Birkenhead and Wallasey and Merseyside drugs squad.

"It is one of the most successful operations involving street-level dealing and using covert means that we have carried out," he said.

The heaviest sentence handed out to the defendants was 10 years and the least 18 months. They were not all members of a gang but belonged to 11 separate groups, explained Det Sgt Hastain.

Adlington pleaded guilty on the basis that he had only been in the three-month conspiracy on one day in the Spring of 1995. He was jailed for two-and-a-half years.

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