POLICING at its best.

That is how a judge described Operation Phoenix the biggest pre-planned drugs crackdown ever undertaken in Hampshire, as the last defendant to appear before the courts in connection with the operation was jailed.

Mansour Inferadi, 25, was sentenced to three years in prison after prosecutor James Kellam described how he had been involved in drug deals with undercover police officers posing as buyers.

Inferadi, of Northumberland Road, Southampton, was used by the main players in the supply of class A drugs to help facilitate the deals, handling cash and being present on five occasions when deals were made.

The court heard how unemployed Inferadi, who pleaded guilty to five counts of supplying class A drugs, had got involved in supplying drugs to fund his own addiction and that he had played a lesser role than those at the heart of the supply chain.

Sentencing him at Southampton Crown Court, Judge Christopher Leigh QC said: "The consequences were that as the amounts of money escalated you played a more important role in it."

He then went on to praise those officers who worked on Operation Phoenix for their hard work in the investigation and securing the convictions of 69 people, most of whom have been jailed.

Judge Leigh said: "I commend those officers for the excellent and courageous way in which they performed those difficult undercover duties.

"This operation was policing at its best and the consequence has been a highly successful strike against the evil of class A drugs."