Editorial: Come down hard on city drunks
5:30 AM Sunday Jun 17, 2012
The mayhem has prompted the police and the Auckland Council to create a local alcohol policy. Photo / Dean Purcell
Central Auckland has long been a dodgy place at night, particularly on Friday and Saturday. And, as the Herald on Sunday has repeatedly reported, the mean streets have turned a good deal meaner in recent months.
Inner-city residents and our own staff have witnessed scenes of degrading drunkenness and violence. Broadcaster Martyn Bradbury, who has been living in the CBD for 20 years, told the Herald that he regularly sees groups of "very drunk" young men actively looking for fights.
The statistics bear him out: public order offences in Central Auckland soared by 27.1 per cent last year and the 4237 incidents included nearly 1000 liquor-ban breaches, as well as charges of disorderly behaviour, wilful damage and urinating in the street.
The impression this creates for tourists staying in the upscale hotels in the centre of the city is too hideous to contemplate. What stories must they tell when they go home of how the streets of Auckland compare with those of New York or London?
The mayhem has prompted the police and the Auckland Council to create a local alcohol policy under which laws will be tightened and availability of booze restricted. This is all well and good, but the policy awaits the passage of the Alcohol Reform Bill through Parliament. We say the time for action is now.
The British television reality show Coppers, which recently followed police as they dealt with drunken yobs in the streets of English cities, provides a good lead. Police need no further excuse to launch a "shock and awe" assault on yobboes.
Drinking in public in the CBD is already banned by council bylaws, so police have the authority to come down hard on people "pre-loading" before going into licensed premises. Simply being drunk in public is not an offence, but a drunk who is a public nuisance may be arrested for "disturbing the peace".
Let the police spend a few weekends taking a very literal view of that phrase. Then let them be backed up by a judiciary exercising zero tolerance for drunkards' rights. That way the city can again become a pleasant place to spend an evening.
And then as you say the police to enforce it and the judges to have zero tolerance and maximum penalties.
So being drunk but not disturbing the peace is OK?A fine line there. You place all the cost onto the Police and thus the ordinary tax payer to control this and none on the drug dealers aka the alcohol industry that advertise this drug will make you sexy, sophisticated and glamorous and control themselves.
Put your head in the sand and ignore the obvious evidence based solutions. Stop advertising, a sinking lid on the outlets cut the hours back to 3am and "one way entry" by 1am to reduce the exit concentration of drunks.
Raise a tax and minimum price per standard drink to hit the heavy drinkers in the pocket but minimise the cost to tax payers as the tax will pay for the solution you require: More police and thus court costs.
They have been instructed to arrest 13% less people as a cost-cutting exercise. Situations like this occur because people know they will only getting a warning - no real consequence.