POLICE used image mapping and forensic evidence to foil a gang who rammed cars into shops and garages to steal goods worth £156,000.

Operation Brand was the biggest investigation by Cheshire Western Area police in recent years.

A team of officers was set up to target burglars from Ellesmere Port who committed at least 60 smash and grab raids across the UK from last November to February.

Raids committed in Chester during that time included Tessuti in Watergate Street last February, where offenders drove through doors to grab designer clothes worth thousands of pounds.

Convenience stores in Upton, Vicars Cross and Sainsburys in Great Boughton were also targeted and thousands of pounds of cigarettes taken.

In Yorkshire and Surrey sports equipment worth £30,000 was taken from golf clubs.

Offenders bought high powered getaway cars especially for the raids and were involved in high-speed chases with police.

DCI Andy Southcott headed the operation from Blacon police station. He said: 'We were determined to use everything we could to stop these raids.

'It was important to send out the message that we would utilise everything we had available to us so we pulled together specialist teams of officers with various skills.'

DCI Southcott said a pattern of offences emerged and intelligence from residents in Ellesmere Port began to point towards a certain group.

Forces from across the country also contacted Blacon with information about raids that followed the same pattern.

Specialist image mapping techniques matched masked faces of offenders caught on CCTV with mugshots.

Mobile phone records showed where suspects were at the time of offences and fingerprints were found on golf club guides in cars used to ram-raid clubs.

Sgt Simon Parker, who worked on the case, said: 'The sheer number of people we wanted to speak to and the reasons we wanted to speak to them for made it very difficult to target them.

'In many cases, we knew exactly who was doing what but we didn't have the evidence. This meant we had to approach things from a different angle.

'We had to charge the suspects for offences we could prove they committed and use the bail conditions and sentences imposed against them to put a stop to their behaviour.'

Four Ellesmere Port men were last week jailed for four years for committing burglaries in Yorkshire, Surrey and Staffordshire, netting goods worth more than £40,000.

A further 11 men have been charged with linked offences and 35 cars were confiscated.