Keighley police are fighting back against drug gangs, increasing patrols and enforcement to disrupt drug dealing and improve community safety.
It was designed to clear Keighley’s streets of pushers peddling poisonous drugs. Two years after it was launched, Operation Saintpond keeps on delivering as street dealers appear in court – and are sent to prison.
“Operation Saintpond”.
The goal: to curb the scourge of drug-dealing that has scarred a Yorkshire town. The method: using undercover police officers to identify, arrest, and charge dealers. Launched to directly tackle organised criminality in the Keighley area, by anyone’s estimation Operation Saintpond has been a stunning success.
Scores of drug dealers have gone through the courts, and most have been handed lengthy jail terms for peddling heroin, crack cocaine, cocaine, and cannabis on the streets of Keighley.
The 18-month joint operation between West Yorkshire Police, North Yorkshire Police, and the Regional Organised Crime Unit focused on the dismantling of drugs linked to county lines in Keighley and across the border in Skipton by targeting leaders of Class A drug supply in the area.
The modus operandi was consistent: police officers, working undercover, infiltrated drug groups and posed as users to buy illicit drugs from local dealers in the Keighley area by calling “ring and buy” drugs lines.
Those lines used names like “Rico”, “Barry” and “Ghost”. Often there would be multiple purchases over several days. Dealers would be caught on hidden cameras and identified, their homes raided, and drugs and often thousands in cash seized.
Then the route to court would begin. As of December this year, more than 30 people have been convicted and given more than 128 years in prison. Operation Saintpond was conceived as a response to violent turf wars involving feuding rival gangs in Keighley.
These gangs – known formally as Organised Crime Groups, or OCGs – had been responsible for what the police described as “historical issues of street supply of Class A drugs in the Keighley area and the periods of sustained violence and associated criminality that this has fuelled.”
That violence included the use of firearms, large-scale disorders and fights involving machete, knives, and baseball bats, arson attacks on homes and cars, the ramming of vehicles, and serious assaults.
Such incidents meant that Keighley Central – one of six wards in the Keighley Neighbourhood Policing Area – was routinely at the top of Bradford District’s Serious Organised Crime (SOC) Local Profile.
In a damning indictment for the town, Keighley’s score using the Crime Severity Scoring (CSS) measure was dramatically impacted by offences of Most Serious Violence and Drugs Trafficking.
Inspector John Barker, who heads Keighley Neighbourhood Policing Team, authored a stark and strongly worded overview of the impact of the illicit drugs trade on Keighley.
He said: “I am aware of multiple incidents of damage, serious assault, and disorder over the last two years since being in [my] role, which information available to me suggests are linked to the drugs supply network within Keighley.
“These offences and incidents have a significant impact on the local community in terms of people feeling safe and secure and [being] able to go about their daily life.”
Focusing on a period of just a few months from late 2023 to March 2024 Inspector Barker drew up an alarming list of incidents – affray, disorder, groups armed with guns, machetes, and baseball bats attacking and torching cars, and armed rivals attacking each other – that he said was related to “retaliatory, intimidatory, and ultimately violent behaviour associated with the organised supply of Class A drugs within Keighley.”
What’s more, businesses, community leaders, and local politicians were urging the police to get a grip on rising levels of anti-social behaviour that were blighting the town.
People living in Keighley were disheartened, frustrated, intimidated. And many were scared.
Operation Saintpond was followed by “Operation Sharkview”, in which officers from West and North Yorkshire carried out a series of raids across Keighley and Skipton during April and May of 2024.
Weapons including swords, a machete, and a crossbow were seized as well as £100,000 in cash and 3kg (6lbs) of cannabis, crack cocaine, and heroin.
In total 62 people were arrested and 31 were charged with supplying drugs.
Inspector Barker’s Community Impact Statement formed part of many prosecution barristers’ cases when drug dealers appeared in court.
In it, Inspector Barker said: “The negative impact that drugs have on my communities leads to public confidence issues and in turn affects the reputation of not only the local area of Keighley but the wider Bradford District.
“My staff are committed to dealing with the drugs challenges in Keighley supported by our specialist teams.
“However, investigations such as Operation Sharkview, which this investigation forms part of, divert crucial resourcing away from other key crime types, threats, and visibility of resourcing, which the public want.
“I therefore ask for the court to consider the significant impact that the sustained supply of Class A drugs has on the people, communities, and businesses of Keighley and ask that the full sentencing powers of the court are considered to demonstrate how seriously the authorities and criminal justice system take this crime, in supporting them to rid Keighley of this criminality.”
One judge dealing with the conveyor belt of convicted peddlers who found themselves in the dock described the climate of drug supply and abuse in Keighley as “a sustained criminal enterprise designed to profit from addiction and misery”.
Another described the spectre of drug supply in the town as “a plague”.
Jailing one trio for peddling drugs, His Honour Judge Colin Burn said: “The reality is that this kind of activity generally, and certainly in a place the size of Keighley, causes all sorts of problems, criminality, and reputational damage frankly [to the town].”
On another occasion he told a dealer: “This activity is wreaking havoc in Keighley, which is why this operation was set up and you were one of the people caught in that net.”
The net was broad, and it caught many.
The success of Operation Saintpond can by judged by the long list of those convicted. Other towns similarly afflicted by the plague of drug-dealing may take some encouragement from Saintpond and the energy, drive, and commitment of those behind it.
Caught and convicted: The roll call of misery
- Waqas Ahmed, 30, formerly of Keighley: five years and eight months
- Nozmul Alom, of Nightingale Street, Keighley: 32 months
- Mohammed Awais, 30, of Castle Road, Keighley: three years and four months
- Keiron Cornforth, 25, of Broster Avenue, Keighley: 12 months imprisonment suspended for 18 months plus 180 hours unpaid work
- Patrick Haughey, 36, of Woodhouse Drive, Keighley: 40 months
- Sohail Hayat, 29, of Spencer Street, Keighley: four years and six months
- Dawud Hussain, 25, of Victoria Mews, Keighley: four years and four months
- Naveed Hussain, 35, of Chatsworth Street, Keighley: four years and six months
- Saqib Hussain, 30, formerly of Keighley: 72 months
- Sohail Hussain, 24, of Dale View Road, Long Lee, Keighley: six years and two months
- Muhammed Hussanein, 20, of Redcliffe Street, Keighley: two years youth custody suspended for two years plus 100 hours of unpaid work
- Adnan Iqbal, 28, of Cark Street, Keighley: 33 months
- Zaffar Iqbal, 54, of Granville Street, Keighley: four years and six months
- Haroon Ishaq, 35, of Skipton Road, Keighley: eight years and five months
- Hameed Khalifa, 39, Devonshire Street, Keighley: five years and eight months
- Jameel Khan, 27, of Emily Street, Keighley: 30 months
- Wasim Khan, 38, of Sunny Hill Grove, Keighley: 32 months
- Mohammed Khayah, 22, of Oberon Way, Cottingley, Bingley: three years
- Daniel Lakatos, 20, of Sand Street, Keighley: four years and nine months
- Enrico Lakatos, 23, of Sand Street, Keighley: three years and two months
- Jordan Lonsdale, 30, of Dawson Road, Keighley: two years and 11 months
- Zaber Mills, 23, of Keighley: two years and eight months
- Ali Mughal, 22, of Cliffe Street, Keighley: four years
- Lee O’Connor, 33, of Damems Lane, Keighley: three years
- Hassan Rashid, 32, of Ashleigh Street, Keighley: four years and three months
- Callum Rodden, 25, of Rombalds Drive, Skipton: 33 months
- Nahmaan Sakander, 43, of Southlands Drive, Keighley: 11 years and seven months
- Mohammed Sardar, 27, of Bradford Street, Keighley: three years and nine months
- Johan Shafi, 20, of Mont Grove, Bradford: 30 months
- Arsalan Syed Shah, 24, of Kendal Mellor Court, Keighley: six years and three months.
- Dwight Sloan, 24, of North Dean Road, Keighley: 33 months
- Farakh Yasin, 25, of Devonshire Street, Keighley: four years
Reports are sourced from official documents, law-enforcement updates, and credible investigations.
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