THREE heroin dealers caught in a police campaign to clean up the streets of York have been jailed for 16 years between them.

Two officers went undercover and pretended to be drug users to snare Mark Richard Dickinson, 28, and stepbrothers Richard Fox, 30, and Christopher Wayne Holroyd, 32, York Crown Court heard.

All three repeatedly sold heroin to the police officers at drug meets in York centre arranged by mobile phone.

Khadim Al'hassan, prosecuting Dickinson, Khadim said Dickinson had told detectives he felt sorry for the woman police officer who bought drugs from him claiming to be desperate for them.

Jonathan Carroll, prosecuting the stepbrothers, said that between them, they sold an undercover policeman 1.9g of heroin for £180.

Holroyd, of Bell Farm Avenue, off Huntington Road, pleaded guilty to eight offences of supplying heroin in January. He was on bail at the time for other drugs offences and also pleaded guilty to possessing heroin in September and supplying heroin to pay off drugs debts between January 1999 and September 2003.

He was jailed for five-and-a-half years.

Fox, who lives with his stepbrother, pleaded guilty to five offences of supplying heroin and one of offering heroin for supply and was jailed for four and a half years.

Judge Paul Hoffman, the Honorary Recorder of York, told them: "You were in partnership dealing with drugs on a commercial basis. I am prepared to accept you were fairly low-level dealers. Nonetheless the drug supply pyramid depends on low-level dealers and the police and the courts must do what they can to remove them from circulation."

Dickinson, of Market Street, York, pleaded guilty to three offences of supplying heroin. He had been on parole at the time and was jailed for five years plus 360 days' unserved of a three-year sentence imposed in July 2002 for possessing heroin in York with intent to deal.

The judge told him: "It doesn't look as though you have learned your lesson."

Ian Groom, representing Holroyd, said his client had agreed to sell drugs on behalf of another man to support his own heroin addiction.

Richard Sheldon, representing Fox, said his cclient had very bad health and helped his brother, and Chris Tehrani, representing Dickinson, said his client had slipped back to heroin use when he had pneumonia after his release from jail.

Updated: 10:19 Saturday, May 01, 2004