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Caught on camera: Police swoop on the 'sweet shops' of Walsall's Dora Street

"Just whack them on to the floor as soon as you get in. If they ditch the drugs first, we can't charge them - so don't take your eyes off them."

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The warning in a briefing room at Bloxwich Police Station came from Pc Lewis Poppitt minutes before 13 officers executed two search warrants on addresses in the infamous Pleck district of Walsall, one of the worst prostitution hotspots in the UK.

They were hoping to catch at least one of four known drug dealers in the act of dropping off crack cocaine and heroin to a dealer who, in turn, sells it on to sex workers.

Unmarked police cars are parked up in an adjoining road before officers stream down Dora Street and noisily force entry at two unremarkable mid-terraced houses.

In one property three sex workers are found surrounded by the trappings of cocaine and heroin addiction - crack pipes, used needles, tin foil and scales.

A machete, ashtrays and smoking pipes, some of the items on a table.

An account book is discovered in the kitchen detailing individual sales from an original delivery of 30 bags of 'white', or crack cocaine, and 32 bags of' 'brown', otherwise known as heroin.

Alarmingly the haul also includes a home-made machete with an eight-inch blade found on the living room radiator.

Police bring out a machete from a property in Dora Street.

The girls are strip-searched, the floorboards taken up and the house scoured for drugs but apart from remnants in old needles, there are none. Nor are there any dealers.The other house is empty. Despite intelligence built up over 18 months, on this occasion the teams leave empty-handed.

But the late-night swoop on Dora Street is not entirely unproductive. Importantly, it demonstrates to residents, who last week met to voice their concerns about the local sex and drug trade to police and councillors, that the force continues to take their fears very seriously.

Countless attempts have been made over the decades to clean up the streets of Walsall. The latest, Operation Scarlet, which was given a dedicated vice team, was launched in 2012.

Police search through bags at one of the Dora Road properties.

Recently, as the force struggles with a dwindling numbers, officers have been assigned to carry out the work as part of their general neighbourhood duties. But constabulary chiefs are keen to show that the successful campaign has not been dropped.

Officers on the ground, too, have every sympathy with the residents but they are hampered by prostitution's long-time links with the drugs trade.

A machete and smoking pipe, some of the items on a table in a property searched by police, in Dora Street, Pleck, Walsall.

The police estimate that around 97 per cent of Walsall's sex workers - based mainly in the Caldmore, Pleck and Wednesbury Road area - are Class A users.

Pc Gemma Taylor, aged 29, said: "Operation Scarlet changed the emphasis, as far as the girls were concerned, from being treated as criminals to being seen as victims.

"Most of our targets are the men who supply the drugs. In Walsall the girls don't tend to have pimps but they have boyfriends who are also drug users, who will hang around two streets away while the girls ply for business. Afterwards they'll go and find drugs together ."

Syringes, pills and condoms were among the items found in the bags searched by officers.

Colleague Pc Jodie Allen, 30, agreed. "I've never searched a prostitute who's had money on her. It's handed straight over to the boyfriend."

There are plenty of crack houses in the vicinity in which to spend their money. Pc Mike Hall, 28, reckons that along one street alone there could be as many as 12. "I'm guessing," he says, "But I wouldn't be surprised."

The properties are rented temporarily under false names from social landlords who don't ask too many questions. Pc Taylor says: "They're like sweet shops for drug users. The girls go in, buy, use in the room and leave, very often to go out on the street again looking for more business. It's the same every night, it's as busy on a Tuesday night as it is on a Saturday."

Police force their way into a Dora Street property.

The sex workers are generally aged between 18 and 30, although some come back on the streets later for what officers call 'white goods' reasons.

Pc Allen says: "There's one in her late 40s who we'll see when her fridge has broken down or her telly's on the blink and she needs to pay for a new one. Another comes out when she's run out of electricity.

"The only exit strategy that works is age, when they finally get too old for the punters."

The officers speak with genuine affection for the girls. "We feel very protective. I want to set them up in a nice house or take them home. They're nice girls. They don't give us any trouble

Police take away a female (centre), from one of the houses.

"Most have got a story of physical or sexual abuse. A handful still have their mums and dads and talk of really decent upbringings," says Pc Taylor.

Unfortunately for the police, intelligence in this tight-knit community gets back to the dealers swiftly and they move on. The problem for the residents is that they rarely move very far.

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