Police raid homes
8:08am Wednesday 14th May 2008
POLICE seized suspected stolen goods when they raided two houses in York.
Officers carried out two warrants at houses in Kirkham Avenue, in the Heworth area of the city.
Neighbours gathered in the street to watch as three vans of officers arrived outside the houses shortly before 2pm yesterday.
Eighteen police officers and four Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) were involved in the raids, including two search teams, two dog handlers and two firearms officers, who were on hand to put the doors of the houses through with battering rams.
Police found a small amount of cannabis at one of the addresses, which were on opposite sides of the street. They also seized some property, which they believe may have been stolen from a local building site, including tools and a generator. Sgt John Freer, of the Heworth Safer Neighbourhoods Team, said more warrants were expected to be carried out in the area in the near future. He said officers were acting on intelligence which had come from the local community.
"The message is that we will act on any information we receive in relation to drug dealing and drug offences in the Heworth ward," he said. "We won't just sit on that information, we will act on it. Warrants will be sought through the courts and we will continue to do that."
He said PCSOs from the team would be dropping letters through the doors of people nearby today to let them know about what had happened.
The warrants are a part of a wider crackdown on all kinds of anti-social behaviour in the Heworth ward - including drug-related issues.