News

Source - Glasgow Evening Times 25/05/11

Scotland’s most senior frontline officers believe they should have the right to call time on alcohol-fuelled parties held in private homes.

The Association of Scottish Police Superintendents (Asps) say they should be able to treat ‘party flats’ and houses in exactly the same way they handle problem pubs.

Police, they believe, should be allowed to order party-goers out of a property, tell householders to shut up shop and seize alcohol on the premises.

The new demands come as police are increasingly called to deal with disturbances at private homes as drinkers shun pubs in favour of cheap supermarket booze.

Asps President Chief Superintendent David O’Connor, said: “This is a huge issue in Glasgow.

“We are finding that police are being called out two or three times in a shift to a single home and that these homes are appearing in reports over and over again.

“There are clearly now problem premises that are being used as drinking dens and we think these should be treated in the same way as pubs.”

Police – and other authorities, including councils and housing associations – can already use anti-social behaviour legislation to tackle householders who have noisy parties.

But force insiders stress the problem has become far worse since the smoking ban. The price difference between alcohol in pubs and supermarkets has also fed the problem.

Mr O’Connor stressed that the new measures are not designed to deal with rowdy student parties. Police can already take stereos away under existing anti-social behaviour laws.

His concern is the sheer number of serious crimes that take place in established but informal drinking dens.

Knife murders leapt last year in Strathclyde – although they are running about average for the last five years.

Police analysts have put much of that rise down to knife fights among drinking buddies.

In fact, some 80% of the first 40 homicides recorded in 2010-11 were killings by what the police call “associates”. Most of these crimes were what some cops – with their gallows humour – call “inside jobs”. Fully 26 of those incidents involved alcohol, and 18, bladed instruments.

One of the reasons why police opposed Labour’s Holyrood plans to jail all those caught carrying a knife was that many of the worst stabbings occur in the home, not the street. Worse, domestic stabbings are more likely to prove fatal than those in public places, where help may be available.

Strathclyde’s Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton, last year hinted that police may now have to get more serious with indoor drinking.

He said: “We don’t want to be putting the gangs taskforce through the door of every noisy party. But there will be times when we could use our community officers, our friends in housing associations and councils to watch out for those that present the biggest risks.”

Asps, meanwhile, has renewed its backing for the SNP’s policy of minimum alcohol pricing.

Mr O’Connor will formally make his call for a change in legislation at Asps’ annual conference in Peebles, which begins tomorrow.