Every year the authorities appeal for sensible behaviour. Every year a significant number of idiots ignore them and run riot.

For most, Halloween is an excuse for some harmless, spooky fun, but for a few it seems to be a trigger for yobbery and cruelty.

How can we describe the people who overturned cars in Rose Hill, slashed tyres or, pathetically, smashed to a pulp a children's pumpkin innocently displayed outside their house?

Supt Jim Trotman found the right word: malicious.

These people seem unable to cope with the innocent fun of others and to revel in the terror they spread in our communities.

It is daft to blame the traditions of Halloween for all this.

Trick or treating is not a terrible pastime - it just depends how you go about it.

The yobs who spoilt the fun on Tuesday will be the same nutters letting off fireworks until dawn in a street near you this weekend - and for the next few weeks to boot.

The police did good work in the run-up and are rightly proud that there were slightly fewer reported incidents than last year.

But 20 is still a lot and, we suspect, the tip of an iceberg of unreported misdemeanours.