A 41-year-old drug dealer convicted by a jury after he was caught by the police’s Operation Stalebank has been jailed for four and a half years.

Father-of-three Bryan Carter, of Southfield Lane, Great Horton, Bradford, was caught red-handed supplying heroin on Gaythorne Road, West Bowling, Bradford, on April 11 last year.

He denied the offence but was found guilty yesterday after a trial at Bradford Crown Court.

Following the unanimous verdict, prosecutor Mark McCone said Carter had 24 criminal convictions, including one for supplying heroin in 2001 when he was jailed for four years.

The court heard the sentence was cut on appeal to three years.

Carter was in breach of a community order imposed in August, 2012, for possession of heroin and crack cocaine.

Judge Peter Benson ordered that his Ford Mondeo car, seized by the police when he was arrested dealing drugs from it, be forfeited.

The vehicle will be sold to help fund the fight against crime in West Yorkshire.

Carter, a long-standing heroin addict, was caught when undercover police officers posed as drug users to lure dealers to the area.

He was driving the Mondeo when a wrap of heroin was sold to an addict on the street.

Judge Benson told Carter: “The streets of Bradford have been blighted for many years by people who go out and deal in heroin and crack cocaine.”

Operation Stalebank has so far seen more than 80 drug dealers put behind bars a total of for more than 260 years.

More are coming up for sentence later this month and into April.

The large-scale police crackdown on street drug dealing in Bradford last year centred mainly on the West Bowling and Manningham areas.

Police officers posing as addicts approached drug users and obtained the phone numbers of mobile street dealers who arrived, usually within minutes, to deliver wraps of heroin and crack cocaine.

The dealers and their vehicles were photographed with hidden cameras and the culprits arrested at a later date.