AN ADDICT caught selling heroin and crack cocaine to plain-clothes police officers became the latest to be jailed in an undercover sting that has claimed dozens of dealers.

John Gibbons cycled around Park South and Walcot dishing out the illegal drugs from out of a plastic bag.

Jailing Gibbons, a Swindon judge told him he was part of a trade that ruins lives.

Swindon Crown Court heard that on multiple occasions this summer, the 51-year-old sold sets of three wraps of crack and heroin for £25 to undercover officers directed to different locations in the Parks and Walcot area – including a skate park at Buckhurst Field just 40m from a children's nursery.

Two officers who bought the drugs on separate occasions in August said Gibbons had a plastic bag with him in which they estimated was stashed around 50 wraps of class A drugs.

He told one of the police officers he had a lot of drugs because he was being put upon to sell a lot.

Gibbons was arrested on October 8, the second day of a week-long blitz against County Lines dealing by Swindon detectives.

Two days later he was arrested again as police responded to reports of addicts congregating in an underpass beneath Queens Drive. Gibbons was found with £180 in cash, a black Nokia phone, 24 wraps of crack cocaine and heroin and two larger chunks of the drugs.

Gibbons, of no fixed address, admitted supplying class A drugs.

In his defence it was said Gibbons was himself addicted to the products he was selling, was vulnerable and had supplied drugs to those he believed to be already addicts.

Jailing him for three years and eight months, Judge Peter Crabtree told Gibbons: “Anyone who involves themselves at whatever level in the supply of class A drugs involves themselves in a criminal enterprise that ruins lives – you know that better than anyone Mr Gibbons – and undermines the fabric of society.”