Drunkenness 'uncontrolled' in Albany

Albany's top cop has slammed uncontrolled drunken behaviour in the city’s streets, saying alcohol-fuelled violence and disorderly conduct is exhausting police resources every week.

Officer-in-charge Senior Sergeant Peter McLean said the problem was taking its toll on his officers, who have “had enough” of breaking up intoxicated brawlers and ordering ambulances to take away unconscious drunks.

“Let’s face it, it’s huge,” he said of the drinking problems.

“They are getting themselves written off.”

Data released this week from the WA Drug and Alcohol Office shows fewer people in the Goldfields, Kimberley, Mid-West and Pilbara regions have required hospitalisation from drunken incidents in recent years, but anecdotal evidence suggests the same is not the case in Albany.

Sen. Sgt McLean said locations outside popular nightspots on York Street and Stirling Terrace were consuming the majority of police resources on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

“Just about every resource we’ve got after 10pm Thursday, Friday and Saturday are to do with licensed premises, intoxicated people and unfortunately we get the assaults that come out of it,” he said.

Sen. Sgt McLean said extreme intoxication of victims and alleged offenders was making police officers’ job frustratingly difficult.

Between Friday and Sunday morning last week, police attended at least four violent incidents in central Albany, two of them involving vicious assaults which landed victims in hospital.

One of two male victims assaulted by three other males in the early hours of Saturday morning in York Street near Alison Hartman Gardens, said Albany was “not safe”. Both victims, in their early 20s, were bashed while walking to find a taxi on Stirling Terrace. A 24-year-old was left unconscious with a fractured cheek and taken to hospital by ambulance, before being airlifted to Perth yesterday to undergo facial reconstruction.

The same night police were called to another fight at Caltex on York Street, despite the store closing its doors to the public from 11pm onwards on Friday and Saturday nights for a month-long trial.

A brawl outside the Premier Hotel early Friday morning resulted in one male being taken to hospital with head injuries, while another at 12.20am on Saturday landed another unconscious man in hospital.

St John Ambulance regional manager David Schober said he was worried drunken violence was “draining” emergency service resources.

Albany paramedics responded to four incidents relating to intoxication and violence in central Albany last weekend.

Sen. Sgt McLean said he expected incidents of public drunkenness to increase as the warmer weather sets in and called on licensees to ensure they were “running a tight ship” to help reduce incidents.

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