Britomart Chaos Unacceptable
By now you would have seen the reports doing the rounds of a brawl breaking out at Britomart Station on Saturday night after the Christmas in the Park, and Raggamuffin events were concluded.
You can see the Herald report here:
Marauding youths shut down Britomart station
By Sam Boyer, Mathew Dearnaley 6:10 PM Sunday Dec 14, 2014
Dozens of marauding youths brought Auckland trains to a halt last night as hundreds of people converged on Britomart to get home after Christmas in the Park.
Police and security guards closed access to the Super City’s main railway station soon after 11pm after 30 to 40 youths climbed on top of turnstiles and began pushing and shoving each other on the platforms.
A video on Facebook captured some of their behaviour, showing them taunting and making aggressive gestures to the guards.
A heavy sign was thrown across the turnstiles at the guards before police arrived to restore order.
…..
Source and full article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11374116
The gates at Britomart themselves were the device as well as the guards and Maori Wardens that kept that brawl from spreading out of control.
But questions of the police need to be asked especially after a video emerged on Facebook showing the brawl going for five long minutes and still no police on the platform level. So to the Commander of Waitemata Police:
- Why were their no police on the main platform level after the events has concluded to act as a visible deterrence
- Why were their no police heavily patrolling outside the Britomart McDonalds where the rolling brawl started to both stop the brawl there and prevent it going down to the main platform levels
- Why after the brawl spread to the Britomart Platform level there was absolutely no police on that platform to break it up. A video clip shows the brawl going for five minutes and no police
- Why was there no squad ready with paddy wagon and dogs ready for instant deployment in such an event
- Why did the intelligence unit not pick up on the volatility of this before it happened or are they to busy pinging journalists critical of the Government?
- Why no arrests
The video is here: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=857078164313656&pnref=story
This not the first time the police have failed to respond to such incidents at a pubic transport stop or station.
Our public transport is meant to be safe so people especially families will use it but if the police can not do its job in deterrence and busting of such disturbances it does not give confidence to the rest of the City and tourists when we do hold large events. Furthermore the main platform level is a dangerous place if bad behaviour occurs on that level. Falling onto the tracks sober will hurt as is, falling onto the tracks drunk and no control is not going to be a pretty sight especially if head hits the iron. Also train movements is enough to put things at higher risks of an accident before control manages to bring all such movements to a halt.
I have noted this is not also the first time Christmas in the Park has resulted in drunken behaviour either. That situation faces a very easily solution: either we tell our peers to get themselves back in order or face Council dropping the ban hammer on the event. A pity a few spoil it for the rest so we might be wanting to better self police our peers before an authority does it for us with a blunt instrument…
As a comparison the NRL 9’s earlier this year was a very busy event but no reports of major issues as we saw on Saturday night. So Auckland can get its collective self together…
And so then who will be held to account for this ball dropping?
Talking Southern Auckland 