WHILE most of Preston was sleeping, a convoy of police vehicles pulled up outside two nondescript addresses in Oxford Street, in the shadow of the Avenham multi-storey car park.

Even before the cars had halted, heavily equipped members of Preston's drugs squad, intelligence unit, dog handlers, immigration inspectors and search teams had leapt out.

They were in the area to hunt down 'low level' dealers, the people responsible for supplying street criminals and prostitutes with their daily fix -- and people with possible Jamaican connections.

According to the boss Detective Chief Inspector Graham Gardner, the unit always expect a hostile reaction from the people they arrest, but so far nobody has been hurt in the raids.

But the squad were well briefed before they set out and Detective Sergeant Andy Murphy had warned them to watch out for needles.

In the spectacular blitz, five homes were searched -- in Avenham, Tanterton and Deepdale.

After the raids DS Murphy said: "We have arrested five people on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of controlled drugs. They would be looking at quite a substantial sentence if we were to prove the crime --three to five years."

The squad, working from tip-offs from the community, have seized everything from ecstasy tablets to Ninja-style weapons and handguns. Now the drugs and weapons are stashed in a safe in the police station.

DS Murphy said: "We haven't pulled in as many drugs as we would have liked. But there are other benefits. The immigration officers that came out with us have got an awful lot of information.

"But most importantly the communities know what we are doing. It's sending out the right message. What people want to see is that the police care and do something about the problems."