Top cop: Shut city bars at 2am

Inspector Karl Wright-St Clair said nothing good happens in the Tauranga CBD after 1am.

Police have linked longer bar opening hours in Tauranga's CBD with a 300 per cent higher incidence of alcohol-related crime compared with Mount Maunganui downtown.

A top cop wants to cut hours in the CBD by one hour so bars closed at 2am, with a one-way door policy from 1am to stop people bar hopping in the last hour of trading.

"Nothing good happens in the Tauranga CBD after 1am," Inspector Karl Wright-St Clair said.

Otherwise police want to maintain the status quo for hotels and bars across the rest of the Western Bay up to a maximum closing time of 1am - meaning Mount Maunganui's downtown would stay at 1am.

The police perspective on the joint Tauranga City and Western Bay District proposed Local Alcohol Policy was outlined during public hearings yesterday.

Mr Wright-St Clair said police opposed the plan to extend the maximum closing hours to 3am for all on-licensed premises in Tauranga and the rest of the Western Bay.

He highlighted how the Sale and Supply of Liquor Act 2012 provided a new framework to minimise the harm caused by excessive alcohol consumption.

Mr Wright-St Clair supported having a vibrant city but the starting point for police was the act's objective to reduce unnecessary and preventable harm alcohol caused.

Nationally, crime statistics showed that about one-third of all police arrests involved alcohol and half of violence was alcohol related. Mr Wright-St Clair said about 75 per cent of all crime in the downtown on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights related to alcohol. He refused to provide actual figures.

There had been an overall decline in alcohol-related offences in the city's CBD since 2008 because of council initiatives on The Strand and the police working with licensees to reduce intoxication.

However offending was on the increase at the Mount which linked to a lot more younger people being attracted to new bars.

Mr Wright-St Clair attributed the much higher rate of offending in Tauranga's CBD to the longer opening hours. Reducing the hours of the former Harrington's Nightclub in the CBD and Bobby's Bar at the Mount had lowered offending in both downtowns.

He did not see the migration of drinkers from the Mount to the later closing CBD as being a major issue for police, saying people would still come in at 1am no matter when the Mount closed. Most submitters have raised serious doubts about relaxing the opening hours for all bars in the Western Bay, including some of the city's most prominent licensees. Mount bar owner Clayton Mitchell said there was no data that a one-way door policy would reduce crime and alcohol issues. The booze barn mentality of bars in the 1980s and 1990s had gone, along with the attitudes and high rates of alcohol-related crime. He believed the industry was now in a "harm minimisation period".

Karma Gentlemen's Club, City Sports Bar and Barb's Bistro owner Matthew Gordon said the one-way door policy was ridiculous.

The combination of an earlier closing time and one-way door policy would drive groups of people on to the streets and back to house parties across the district which would continue well past 3am, he said.