They confiscated booze from teenagers and targeted public order offences during Operation Relentless.

Officer worked overtime to tackle alcohol-related crime and domestic violence during the operation, which ended in July and resulted in 184 arrests in Ripley and Heanor.

Sergeant Andy Phillips, from the Ripley section, said: "The main problems in Ripley, Heanor and Langley Mill were public order offences and assaults.

"The hardest thing is convincing people that things are getting better. People don't believe the statistics no matter how many times you tell them."

During the operation plain-clothed officers seized 297 bottles of booze from 86 underage people from areas including Shipley Park, Heanor Memorial Park and the Greenway in Ripley. One incident resulted in 112 cans of lager that had been stored in Shipley Park being removed by police.

Police are now using portable alcohol breath testers to help tackle anti-social behaviour caused by underage drinking.

Officers revealed that a 14-year-old girl was three times the drink-drink alcohol limit and that other underage youngsters had been caught drinking.

Test strips, designed to determine the presence of alcohol in a liquid, have also seen alcohol recovered. Young people often tipped alcoholic drinks into bottles that usually contained soft drinks to disguise what they were doing and mislead police officers, he said.

The police will continue to target anti-social behaviour over the summer holidays. The inspector for Ripley and Heanor, Richard Smith, said: "We are providing a quality of service that the public want. They ring up and we have the resources to deal with it straight away.

"Officers taking on over and above normal hours has led to a reduction in violent crime of more than 20 per cent."