Police target drinkers in pubs

Police are going into bars and pulling out drinkers to check if they are intoxicated in a tough new campaign to prevent crime.

Senior officers seeking to expose the links between alcohol and crime are encouraging staff to tackle the booze culture.

Squads in several districts are stepping up enforcement of the Sale of Liquor Act - particularly the little-known clause that bans intoxicated people from licensed premises.

"We're trying to change the culture of people who have the idea, 'I'm going out and I'm going to go to a pub and get intoxicated'," said Senior Sergeant Shane Mulcahy, in charge of policing liquor licence laws for the Auckland City district.

"I tell the licensees that we're trying to look at big social issues.

"Rather than just trying to get lots of money in their tills, we want them to look at the issues too."

Those issues were drink driving, domestic violence and street violence caused by drunks, the health effects of heavy drinking, and people spending all their pay packets on booze rather than their families.

"There are people who, for years and years, their whole existence has been getting their money, going into pubs and drinking to excess," said Mr Mulcahy.

"That's against the law in premises."

Licence-holders who consistently allow it to happen risk being shut down.

The drinkers are not penalised under the law, although they will usually be ejected from the bar if they are too drunk.

Police will next month begin the nationwide Alco-Link project, in which every person processed through police cells will be quizzed to assess if they are intoxicated and if so, where and when they had their last drink.

The results will give information about problem areas and test the idea that alcohol is responsible for crimes far beyond drink-driving.

The Hospitality Association says it welcomes police moves to address crime, but it is concerned its members may be unfairly targeted.

"The individual responsibility of general patrons could be lost in all this," said the association's national operations manager, Raewyn Bleakley.

"We're concerned about the assumption that all liquor-related problems stem from licensed premises when the majority [of alcohol] is not consumed on licensed premises."

The association says it believes only about 30 per cent of alcohol is drunk in pubs, bars and clubs.

Papers obtained under the Official Information Act show senior police have become increasingly concerned about alcohol's effects.

In a report last year, Deputy Commissioner Bruce Simpson said police did not have a full picture of alcohol's role in New Zealand crime, but "small one-off studies" correlated with overseas results. "For example, a recent survey in Wellington City of police charge sheets indicated that 90 per cent of violent offenders were affected by alcohol."

Mr Simpson said the ACC-financed Alco-Link Project would provide vital information which could be a "powerful tool" in reducing alcohol-related crimes and road crashes.

The project's national manager, Sandra Murray, said the information would be used to make tactical decisions about tackling crime.

It would be used only as a guide for police, not as evidence against bars, she said.

In New South Wales, where the project has run for several years, results had been "quite amazing".

Mr Mulcahy said his squad was now visiting bars to check for drunks rather than in its traditional role of dealing with fights.

"That was the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff," he said. 

He understood that some people might question whether there was a line between law enforcement and social engineering.

"On Christmas Eve, I got a hard time from a few people saying, 'Hey, we're just having a drink'.

"But people just drink to excess. I really believe we're doing the right thing."

The Hospitality Association's Wellington branch president, Adam Cunningham, said his members had noticed an increase in the frequency of police checks on bars for drunks.

"There's a very clear communication coming down from senior police in Wellington that they have linked most crime to alcohol abuse, and one of their policies for dealing with that is to substantially increase policing of liquor premises," said Mr Cunningham.

Some good things had come of the new approach, including a better relationship with police.

"There's an admission on the police's part that they can't do this on their own, and a realisation that we are not the big bad ogres they have historically thought of us as."

Most bar owners and managers took their responsibilities seriously. "It's the odd cowboy who gives us a bad name."

Ms Bleakley said there was concern about how police judged whether someone was intoxicated, and worries about the quality of the information gleaned through Alco-Link, as it was effectively data collected from drunks.

How drunk?

THE LAW

Section 168 of the Sale of Liquor Act makes it illegal for licensees to "allow any intoxicated person to be or to remain on the licensed premises".

THE TEST

To establish if someone is intoxicated, a discussion takes place between the constable, his supervisor and the bar's duty manager. Some of the tests on the form which police use to gauge drunkenness:

Movement - staggers, sways, trips, weaves, walks into objects.

Appearance - eyes glazed, aggressive, tired, asleep.

Speech - slurred, repetitive, loud, nonsensical.

Smell of liquor on breath.

Time spent on premises.

Overall level of intoxication - slight, moderate, extreme, unconscious.