This article in The Punch this morning perfectly sums up the wrong ideas that some people have about the role of police in society.
Michael McShane, an ex-police officer and current managing director of the company that produces Jack Daniels (!) wants to ban public drunkeness and give the police resources to enforce this ban.
Giving the police the power to enforce a law that is by it’s very nature ambiguous (there is no real sure way to know someone is drunk as one man’s drunk person is another man’s exhuberant idiot), and then telling them to enforce it in a high-stress high-hostility situation like a city street full of night clubs is just asking for trouble.
But of course, it suits the liquor industry to have the public purse pay for high-visibility policing rather than to have to bear the cost of reduced sales and higher taxes.
Amy is a Sydney-based journalist and commentator with an interest in politics, music, culture and evidence-based medicine.
She is currently working as a medical journalist for a series of "Specialist Update" websites, and she has also been published in The Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey, New Matilda, and Vibewire's anthology "Interface".
She was a panelist with the Sydney Writers' Festival in 2007 and 2008, organised the Sydney Writers' Festival event "erotic fan fiction" in 2009, and is a regular broadcaster on FBi radio.
As an ex-copper myself, I can say that this sort of ambiguous law just makes life difficult for the poor cop on the street. These laws are bought in with much fanfare by the pollies with little or no thought on how they will actually be put into practice. There are already a set of “offensive conduct/language/behaviour” offences which are ambiguous enough and are frequently thrown out of court. Alcohol related violence is definitely a big problem but locking up everyone who has had one too many is not the answer. I think a tightening of the liquor licencing laws is required – responsible service of alcohol is, in my experience, rarely enforced.
Exactly! I completely agree. Although as someone who has done a lot of barwork over the years it can be hard to really enforce RSA when you have a large number of patrons. I think smaller bars but also maybe we need education and programs to change the culture at a more grass-roots levels (like colleges, sporting clubs, etc) – though it is very hard to tell whther these types of “education” programs actually work…