‘Field hospital’ on front line of booze battles

BY 1.30am the police cells are almost full and the city centre’s ‘field hospital’ is busy dealing with the fallout from Union Street.

The nightclub strip is usually quiet in the early hours of a Monday morning, but bank holiday drinking means an upsurge in crime and injuries.

Ambulance staff and police use the Shekinah Mission, on Bath Street behind the Pavilions, as a base to help deal with people at the scene.

Among the night’s casualties are a distraught young woman who tells officers she has been sexually assaulted behind a nightclub, a police constable who received an eyeful of pepper spray during a brawl outside a bar on the Octagon, and a bar owner who says he was punched in the head outside his Union Street pub.

There is also a woman in her twenties with blood pouring on to her dress from a cut on a her forehead — she has been drinking with friends and tripped when coming out of a club.

The emergency services juggle resources around fights breaking out as bars close, head injuries from assaults and drunken falls, and criminal damage.

Staff on duty say people drinking all day on bank holiday has a “massive impact” on crime and health — as well as hitting the public purse due to a need for extra resources.

Emergency care practitioner William Berkley, one of two people on duty at Shekinah, says: “Bank holidays are generally busier than other nights. And if it’s going to be violent and busy over bank holiday, Sunday night will be the time.

“In the early evening it’s quiet. But as the night wears on, the alcohol is excessive and emotions run high. Alcohol is a dangerous drug.

“It can be mad. People drink and drink and drink. At 8pm they see you and acknowledge, by midnight they love you and by 3am they want to kill you.”

He said most people he deals with are the victims — and it is the minority who cause problems.

William worries resources are taken away from people in need.

Paramedics have come from Dartmouth, Kingsbridge, Liskeard and Saltash — some dropping off patients at Derriford Hospital and then being asked to stay for ‘shouts’ in Plymouth.

William said: “There are sometimes genuinely poorly patients who have to be held back, they have to wait, because you go out sometimes and it’s like Beirut in town.”

Normally only open for business on a Friday and Saturday night, the temporary police and ambulance base at the Shekinah homeless drop-in centre is also manned on Bank Holiday Sunday nights until about 4am the next morning.

While William treats and assesses injuries in one room, a police officer takes statements in another.

William says 90 per cent of the incidents they deal with at the centre are drink-related, often involving assaults.

The most common injuries he sees are broken noses, split lips and busted eye sockets.

Police pass in and out of Shekinah with tales of problems on Mutley Plain, North Hill and the Barbican.

As the night progresses and pubs gradually shut around town, most focus is on Union Street, where some clubs stay open until 8am.

Police Inspector Steve Bickley, who is overseeing allocation of police resources, says: “We plan for the bank holiday nights.

“Usually in some early part of the evening, the night changes because people have been drinking throughout the day and they don’t have to get up in the morning.

“Most people who come in are going to be drunk, drugged or both.

“And if it’s nice weather, pay day and a full moon, you can guarantee it will be busier.

“Tonight we are fairly stretched but it’s not out of control.”

Police have around 25 extra officers on duty in the city centre.

They have also placed an officer in Derriford Hospital’s accident and emergency department to take statements and support medics if there is trouble.

Mr Bickley constantly answers radio calls, giving him updates about the latest incidents.

When he receives the news at 1.30am that Plymouth’s 40 available police cells are almost full, Mr Bickley says dryly: “That’s a problem for me now. It’s a juggling act — or a bad game of chess.”

He says that when the cells at Charles Cross get full two or three times a month, police deal with it in a number of ways.

Some people involved in more minor disorder are given ‘street bail’ rather than being kept in custody and are asked to return to the station at a later date. Sometimes, people are taken to cells further afield — in Launceston, Exeter or even Newquay.

Mr Bickley describes drinking as having a “massive” impact on crime.

He believes that 24-hour drinking has not achieved the aim of calming the country’s drinking problems, and creating a European-style ‘café culture’.

He says: “If the aim was cafe culture, it hasn’t worked. That [he points in the direction of Union Street] is not a café culture.

“We will probably still be dealing with disorder in the street at 7am.”

Mr Bickley said the vast majority of people don’t cause problems, but by the time 6am comes around — and only 50 to 100 people are left on Union Street — there is a more hardcore element of drinkers causing problems.

He added that it is not the fault of pub and club owners as many people drink cheap alcohol at home before coming out.

At 3.40am, when William leaves Shekinah to return to routine calls, the police are anticipating further street disorder. There are still hundreds of people yet to leave clubs and make their way home safely.

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