Police are taking to the rooftops at night and using military-style scopes to spot car criminals.

Officers on the high-level stake-outs will radio colleagues on the ground and send them straight to where the crooks are.

The move follows a spate of car thefts, vehicle vandalism and break-ins in the Hangleton, Mile Oak and Benfield Valley areas of Hove.

Police have borrowed three scopes, which act like telescopes and provide image-intensified night vision.

The military-style equipment has been loaned to Hove police by the Sussex Police technical support unit.

Chief Inspector Stuart Harrison, second-in-command at Hove, said: "There have been a number of cases of cars being broken into, tyres being stabbed and cars stolen and torched in recent weeks.

"We are responding by carrying out night-time surveillance on strategically located rooftops.

"We are not saying where, or how long the operation will last, for obvious reasons but we are determined to catch these people."

Latest figures show Hove's policy of putting more officers into front-line patrols is paying dividends.

For the year ending in July, car crime in the Hove and Shoreham division was slashed by 20 per cent, burglaries fell by more than a quarter and total crime in the area was down almost six per cent.