What's the opposite of the Midas touch?

The police invited me along to an early morning drugs raid the other day.

They were calling on a man they think is selling heroin from a relative's home.

I did warn them.

Whenever they ask me to come along on these things the people they are looking for are invariably elsewhere.

So, the front door went through after a couple of mighty blows with the battering ram and officers piled in.

Andy the snapper, a lad from another paper and I waited patiently outside for the nod to come out of the shadows.

Then we heard the voice from inside: "He's not here duck."

I'd jinxed the police again.

For the record, the cutie sniffer dog picked up traces of class A - heroin and the like - throughout the place and the team behind this raid are still on the suspect's trail.

I'll stay at home the next time they go for him.

They were doing what? Firing a paintball gun at prostitutes?

Picked up an odd story the other day. It was in the Mercury midweek.

It's one I'll never have to write again if I stay at this desk until I'm carted off to a home for retired hacks.

I heard that a group of young men was cruising the city in a posh car firing paintball gun pellets at working girls in the city's vice areas.

I can't tune into the way those men must look at the world or what motivated this spiteful stunt.

I have a feeling their thought process ran something like this: "Let's humiliate those women. We'll give them a paint stain and a nice little bruise to remember us by."

It was a twist on a story I've looked at many times down the years - violence against the women who we all see when we nip up London Road for a curry or drive along Humberstone Road.

So, attacks on the women is not a new story.

Their 'boyfriends' (pimps actually, but I always feel too self-conscious to use that word - this is Leicester, not New York) are more often than not a vicious, money-grabbing bunch.

Then there are apparently quite a few punters who pay up, do the deed and then mug the girl to get their money back.

The paintball gun story came to me late in the day, so the people who would normally put me in touch with the women had gone home for the day.

A word here about those people. It's a welfare group called New Futures and they are top.

So, I headed out alone to the two areas where I expected to run into the women.

I was nervous. I've heard all kinds of stories about the 'boyfriends' and assorted oddballs who hang around the backstreets.

In the event, I spoke to six busy women and managed to avoid the erm, pimps.

Some had heard about the paintball gang, some wondered what I was on about and asked me if I'd be hanging around long because I was "putting the punters off".

But they all had plenty to say when I asked them to speak more generally about the grief they almost expect every time they come out.

All had been assaulted in some way in the past couple of weeks.

One girl I didn't meet that night is as far as I know still waiting for news on whether she's lost her hearing in one ear permanently.

A man came up from behind her and hit across the side of her head with a brick.

One of the women said someone had pinged a small metal projectile at her with a catapult.

And so it goes on.

Happily - and I know that sounds odd - there is something positive to conclude with here.

Now I'm guessing New Futures and sound and sympathetic policing has had an influence here, but the women speak to the police and when they are victims of crime they have come to expect justice.

That wasn't always the case and it certainly isn't universal even now.

But instead of soaking up the punishment they are beginning to feel that they can expect to be listened to and, if they are willing to stay with it and make a statement, action can be taken against abusive, dangerous men.

One punter was jailed for raping several women earlier this year really only because the women stayed with it, made their statements, put up with the vagaries of the criminal justice system and had their day in court.

That man won't be around to harm women for years.

I think the conclusion is that a largely ignored, hidden, even sometimes reviled group of women, is slowly claiming one of the most basic rights.

Incidentally, a day or two later I heard one of the women had passed on the registration number of the posh car the paintball boys were travelling in.

The driver was a well-paid young professional. He's been visited at home and, although he won't be seeing the inside of a courtroom, he's had the fright of his life by all accounts.

Incidentally, I must admit to a little hesitation when I realised I'd inadvertently indulged in a spot of cliched alliteration when I filed the story.

I put the words 'prostitutes', 'pot-shots' and 'paintball gun' - in the first paragraph.

I left it the way it was because I couldn't think of any other way of putting it.

In an earlier post I said something dismissive about cliches in news copy and probably implied that I could never do such a thing.

Clearly I can.

The most demoralising story of the year?

Until yesterday, I hadn't had been involved in our coverage of the most demoralising and difficult story of the year - the Fiona Pilkington case.

Fiona killed herself and her daughter, Francecca, two years ago. She was driven to despair because her family had been singled out for vile abuse by a group of kids who lived on her street.

Some of the abuse must have sounded pretty trivial to police call handlers - otherwise known as the people who pick up the phone when you call.

Fiona complained about kids throwing snowballs, kicking footballs around the place and generally being nuisances.

Ah, but then there were far more sinister things happening too.

Fiona's children, Francecca and Anthony both had learning disabilities. So they were obviously fair game to a gang of vicious young bigots.

Both were at times pushed around, pelted with stones and subjected to taunts and name calling.

Fiona had been complaining about it for years, but it seems the police and assorted council sorts - weren't really listening to her.

If they were, they certainly didn't put the pieces together and work out that there was a pattern, a very nasty pattern, in Bardon Road, Barwell.

And we all know what she did to find peace.

I'd read our coverage of the inquest, which took place over several days last month, and wondered how things could go so wrong.

After all, this is Leicestershire - the home of common sense and, dare I say it, old fashioned neighbourhood policing.

It all seemed so at odds with what I see and hear day to day.

Over the past few weeks I've racked up more than 20 hours out and about with beat officers in Braunstone, Eyres Monsell, Saffron Lane and Mowmacre, Stocking Farm and Abbey Rise.

I was spending time with them for a series of features which is slowly taking shape.

I'm worrying now that it is going to end up looking like us doing a 'bobbies on the beat' PR favour for the police in the aftermath of the Barwell stories.

It was our idea and it's been planned for ages. It has nothing to do with what happened to Fiona and her family.

It struck me that those officers are involved in every area of life in these places, whether it's putting a door through on a drugs house, visiting the vulnerable at home, calling in on shopkeepers or pushing the authorities to clean up a play area.

Yesterday, the great and the good came together at police HQ in Enderby to plot their way through the mess.

Senior officers reassured the members of the police authority that things had and were changing.

Chief constable Chris Eyre's repeated apology to Fiona's family was genuine and heartfelt.

I kind of know Mr Eyre. I don't get too many opportunities to speak to the men and women who work at that level, but whenever I've spoken to him - about everything from people trafficking and enforced prostitution to stripping proper, top-level criminals of their beloved 'bling' - he's struck me as a good sort. Officers at all levels seem to like him too.

Was Barwell a one-off? We'll have to wait and see.

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Home Secretary Alan Johnson did something I'm happy to call stupid this week - he read a quote in a couple of national newspapers and took it as an absolute truth.

They weren't the kind of publications I'd expect a good progressive lad like him to be reading.

He picked up on a comment made during the inquest into Fiona and Francecca's deaths.

It was made by a senior Leicestershire officer and went something like "Dealing with anti-social behaviour isn't a job for the police alone."

This was reported as "Police abandon the streets to feral youths."

Can you spot the difference?

Chief constable Chris Eyre said the two nationals had "dramatically misreported" his colleague's comments.

Oh well, what do those journalists care? They won't be back in Leicestershire any time soon.

It's a funny thing how some of our nationals, especially the ones I'd call pro-establishment, seem to enjoy taking a pop at the police.

Whenever the police are in the firing line, one old hand who works at a city station always points out the cliches which come thick and fast in the reporting.

If the papers don't agree with an arrest - say, it's one of the paper's political or commercial chums - the following tend to appear:

They are inevitably "bundled into the back of a police van" before being held in a "cold and damp police cell".

If they see the inside of a prison (and we know how rare that is for the friends of these national newspapers) they are invariably thrown in among "murderers and rapists".

Funny that.

Say what you like about the way I write my stories - and people do, just look at our website - but I've never stooped that low. Cliches? Eugh.

Welcome to the Leicester Mercury police blog.

So, even I'm doing it now - blogging.

Writing for newspapers comes naturally, but doing so in the first person for a blog is hard and against my grain.

After all, there's no 'I' in journalism.

Oh, there is. Sorry.

I'm just short of a decade into my time at the Leicester Mercury and I've been covering the police beat for the past eight years or so.

I have a rather pompous job title - social affairs correspondent. Put simply, I talk to the police a lot.

For the record, I love what I do. Most days.

It hasn't been a particularly busy week for me. Great time to start a blog.

I am still sore that my favourite haunt - Cafe Roma in Halford Street - was burgled four times in the space of a week.

It was a strange experience writing a crime story about a place I know so well.

If anyone is reading this and fancies a good Italian meal, can I suggest they call in and help them replace the money that was stolen.

Fortunately my colleagues have been hard at work.

The imminent demolition of the Bowstring Bridge - and the uncertain future of the Pump and Tap pub - continues to divide readers.

I have to say I'm a Pump and Tap boy so I'm feeling sore about this too.

The protesters have been there every day this week. Doing what?
Well, it seems they're there to share their resentment at the loss of a rather beautiful old thing.

They've had a lot of coverage in the Mercury, so I was feeling sore - I know, it's been that kind of week - when one of them was verbally abusive to one of our reporters who'd gone down to chat to them.

On the way to the Pump that night I made my feelings known to them - forcefully, I hope.