A couple growing cannabis at a house in Cambridgeshire jumped through a window and hid in the loft of their rental property to evade arrest.
Members of the community contacted police in January after suspecting cannabis was being grown illegally in a property in the town of St Ives.
Officers from the Huntingdonshire neighbourhood team went to check it out and found the front door was barricaded; they then spotted tenants Chovan Ceo jumping out of the window and Lan Thi Nguyen hiding under insulation in the loft.
Inside the house officers found more than 300 cannabis plants with a street value of up to half a million pounds.
Ceo and Nguyen have now been sentenced to two years and three months in prison after pleading guilty to production of cannabis.
PC Tom Russell, from the Huntingdonshire neighbourhood team, says: “Thanks to members of the community, this illegal drug will not reach the streets and this pair are behind bars. Drug trafficking is a source of revenue for organised crime groups, many of whom are involved in other forms of serious crime including modern slavery,
“We would encourage people to look out for signs of illegal cannabis factories including blacked out windows and people coming and going various times of the day.”