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Drunk, disorderly and unpoliced: coming to a town centre near you
Last updated at 00:07am on 12.12.06
Orderly festive cheer: but a lack of policing means that town centres will take the brunt of Christmas overdrinking
John Reid has surrendered town centres to drunken thugs over the Christmas party season by axing a police crackdown on their appalling behaviour.
Police and trading standards teams normally receive an extra £2.5m of cash to flood the streets with extra officers, and stop shops selling alcohol to children.
• Control orders should not preclude the naming of terror suspects say Reid's critics
But the Home Secretary has quietly dumped the six-week Alcohol Misuse Enforcement Campaign (AMEC) this year - despite many pubs and clubs opening round the clock for the first time.
Officials claim police, who have received the cash to fund four previous blitzes, should have gained 'experience' of the tactics they will need to cope with the expected mayhem by now. As a result, they claim, there is no need for extra money.
But critics said Mr Reid risked spoiling the festive season for thousands of innocent revellers.
Last Christmas, the campaign led to 25,500 arrests as police dealt with a staggering 33,358 offences. More than 8,000 on-the-spot fines were handed out. With police starved of the cash - which is sufficient to pay for 18,000 extra eight-hour shifts by constables - many similar offences will go unpunished this year.
There are also fears children will find it much easier to get their hands on alcohol, as the linked crack down by trading standards has also been ditched.
Last year, test purchase operations caught three out of ten pubs and two out of ten off-licences selling drink to minors. It led to almost 650 court summonses for unscrupulous landlords and shopkeepers.
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg accused Mr Reid of 'shocking complacency'. The Home Secretary has made no public announcement of his decision, but was forced to reveal the truth in Parliamentary answers.
Mr Clegg said: "The Government's shocking complacency will be greeted with disbelief by anyone with any experience of alcohol-related crime and disorder in our town and city centres.
"It is bad enough for the Home Office to pretend all is well when rates of alcohol-fuelled disorder have gone up, but to do so at Christmas time when these problems typically increase is especially negligent.
"How can the Government claim it is tough on antisocial behaviour when it can't even manage to stump up the cash to clamp down on illegal sales of alcohol to children?"
Inspector Glen Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said: "I would not have thought it is a good idea to stop these campaigns. The extra funding helped to get a few more officers onto the streets.
"Too many people think the more they can drink the better. It is putting a tremendous strain on police, ambulance crews and hospital A&E departments."
During last year's crack down, Labour's 24-hour drinking laws had only just been introduced. The number of premises staying-open round the clock has since trebled - from 200 to 600 - and thousands more pubs have taken the opportunity to stay open into the early hours.
Opponents said this made a repeat of last year's initiative even more crucial. They questioned whether one possible reason for Mr Reid's reluctance is that, after each blitz, he is forced to reveal how many thugs have been arrested.
Earlier this year, there was serious embarrassment when a summer AMEC campaign exposed dramatic rises in alcohol-related disorder since the introduction of the new late-night drinking laws a year ago.
Alcohol-related arrests during the month-long crackdown averaged 936 per day, compared with 531 in November and December last year - and just 309 per day during a similar operation in 2004.
Taking into account slight changes in the size of each campaign, daily booze-related arrests in each local police unit were 86 per cent higher this summer than before Christmas, and up a massive 160 per cent since Christmas 2004.
This summer's figures also showed a rising proportion of supermarkets being caught selling alcohol to juveniles in 'sting' test purchases.
A third of the youngsters sent to try to buy alcohol in pubs and clubs were served, while one in five succeeded in buying from shops and off-licences - results described as 'disappointing' by ministers.
A Home Office spokesman: "There are no plans for any more full-blown campaigns. The main reason for them was to allow police to gain experience in using a range of tactics.
"That has now been achieved. It is now down to individual forces as part of their everyday core business." j.slack@dailymail.co.uk
Reader views (1)
It should come as no surprise that the action, or in this case lack of action by John Reid, has come about. Sir Ian Blair, the head of the metropoiltan police, who appears to be more interested in social engineering than in fulfilling his pledge as a police officer to uphold the law, is on public record as indicating that he discourages his officers from 'busting' cannabis users. In doing so there are missed opportunities to probe if criminal activities are the source of funding for the supporting the cost incurred by users.
On a more tragic note within a few days of his comments, the guys who terroised underground users in the Willeseden area in order to fund their life style which included cannabis use went on to murder a lovely guy who had the guts to attempt to resist their demands. Sleep well Sir Ian! If your officers had been instructed to do the job you and they are paid for, and I repeat have taken an oath to do so, busting cannabis users would may well have saved a life and a lot of other people the abuse and terror inflicted buy not only those two toe rags, but the yobs who also murdered another man who sought to defend his property,not to mention countless others who are afraid to go outside their front door for fear of being attacked by yobs high on booze cannabis and other drugs.
- Peter O'Loughlin, Beckenham England
