Police review New Year plans after Domain riot

By DARREL MAGER and BERNARD ORSMAN

Police are revising their New Year's Eve crowd control plans after clashes with rioting youths marred the Christmas in the Park concert at the Auckland Domain.

But Auckland City police manager Howard Broad said yesterday that the trouble would not lead to an alcohol ban at the New Year's Eve event in the Domain.

About 200,000 people are expected to fill the Domain for a 12-hour theatrical and musical extravaganza that will be Auckland City's centrepiece party for the millennium.

Mr Broad said the organisers of the Domain party and other events would be spoken to following the riot on Saturday night that led to more than 30 arrests.

Four officers were injured and police called in reinforcements from three special squads, whose members were equipped to deal with riots, after drunken teenagers who had been fighting near the Auckland Museum started throwing bottles at the police about 10.30 pm.

Yesterday a woman wrote to the Police Complaints Authority and the Herald about the "appalling" way she and a group of friends were treated by police.

She said a line of 10 helmeted officers with batons drawn descended on her well-behaved group of 11 friends and physically pushed them out of the Domain. She said she was shoved about eight times.

Police have publicly apologised to innocent members of the public caught up in the melee.

Mr Broad said security issues would be addressed before New Year's Eve.

"There is a real need to ensure that young people don't have access to alcohol ... that they don't have bags filled with booze," he said.

"We also need to make sure that potential missiles are eliminated, so we want to see security people walking through the crowds and picking up bottles."

Several hundred police will be out in force at the Domain, at Aotea Square, at Okahu Domain for a dawn gathering and around the waterfront.

"We expect problems, but there will be a high policing presence throughout the district."

Auckland Mayor Christine Fletcher said the riots were the result of young people not having enough to do and yearning to be part of a crowd.

That was why the city was putting on an alcohol and drug-free carnival-style party aimed at under-25s in Aotea Square from 1 pm to 1 am, she said.

Mrs Fletcher supported the police decision not to ban alcohol in the Domain, saying she believed the majority of people would behave themselves.

North Shore Mayor George Wood did not think the problem of teenage drinking parties on the Shore would occur on New Year's Eve because of a family atmosphere to celebrations.