NEWS: Herald Sun - 03/10/2006 "Melbourne's mean streets"

[hoptis]

8) The Herald Sun is going "undercover" in nightclubs again...

Melbourne's mean streets
Paul Anderson, Jane Metlikovec and Shannon McRae
October 03, 2006 12:00am

Woman in trouble: Shane Steegstra treats a possible GBH victim on a Melbourne street.

INSIGHT: THIS is the ugly face of Melbourne after dark – drunks, drug users and gang members assaulting the public, police and paramedics.

Herald Sun Insight went undercover into nightclubs and travelled with emergency service workers to witness their nightly peril.

The Herald Sun saw bashings, overdoses and open drug-dealing.

Insight found:

TEENAGE drug dealers earn more than $1000 a night by selling drugs in Melbourne clubs.

GIRLS just out of high school use nightclub VIP rooms as drug dens to sell their illegal wares.

UNLICENSED bouncers used by rogue operators terrorise club patrons.

DRUNK and drugged youths are often found unconscious in city streets and lanes.

STUDENTS pay up to $200 for fake IDs so they can get into clubs.

BINGE drinking is common among teenagers.

STANDOVER gangs are preying on people leaving Prahran and Flemington venues.

Pack violence has left police feeling under-manned in the Chapel St nightclub precinct.

They often resort to capsicum spray to subdue violent offenders.

"The troublemakers come from inside some of the nightclubs, and there are a lot of hangers-on who come from everywhere," a police source said.

"The pack mentality becomes dangerous. They see it as sport trying to bait the cops."

Insight witnessed large groups of young men verbally and physically intimidating Chapel St revellers.

Crowd control expert Dave Hedgecock yesterday painted a bleak and dangerous picture.

He said the crowd control industry was in need of a shake-up as rogue operators were undercutting legitimate firms by employing under-age and unlicensed staff.

"Police have lost the battle with gangs on the street, and it is a gang mentality we're dealing with," Mr Hedgecock said.

"People need to realise what's happening because it's their kids that are going out to these clubs.

"They're walking into an environment where security's there as a necessity, but the limits of what they can do make it simply a camouflage.

"The fact is we're constantly outnumbered by large groups of gangs.

"We've had more security guys attacked in the last two or three years than ever."

Paramedics told Insight they were often abused and assaulted while on duty Paramedic Alan Eade said drunks were the greatest source of violence, followed by those suffering the delusional effects of drugs.

Paramedics in the Dandenong area recently refused to attend brawls outside nightspots without police help after attacks by drunks and psychotic drug users.

"Friday, Saturday and, to some extent, Sunday nights in the CBD are the nights you just know everyone is going to have alcohol in them to some degree," Mr Eade said.

"I don't want to be seen to be slamming the alcohol industry, but alcohol causes us a heap of work and increases the risk to paramedics unbelievably.

"A lot of the people we take to hospital who have had the living hell beaten out of them were doing nothing other than waiting at a tram or bus stop minding their own business, and they've been set upon by someone, or a group of people, who might be intoxicated."

Police recently announced Victoria the safest mainland state for the 2005-06 financial year, but total crimes against the person rose in the CBD and inner suburbs.

There was a 17 per cent rise in robberies in the CBD and inner suburbs, a 3.2 per cent rise in assaults and a 17 per cent increase in property damage.

Police Association secretary Paul Mullett said lack of police on the front line allowed for violent crime.

"There are clearly not enough police deployed to stem the rising prevalence of violent gang-related crimes committed late at night and in the early hours in licensed venues and surrounding precincts of Melbourne," Sen-Sgt Mullett said.

"Unfortunately, despite recruitment of a net additional 1600 police officers since 1999, there are actually 655 fewer police deployed to first-response frontline duty than there were in 2003."

Acting Det-Supt Daryl Clifton said it was wrong to assume the city and its inner suburbs were unsafe after dark.

"Police have placed a high priority on ensuring a visible presence in areas of concern after dark, with significant success," he said.

According to Police Minister Tim Holding, crime in the city and inner suburbs had fallen 32 per cent since 2000-01.

"The bottom line is that the Bracks Government has increased the size of Victoria Police by more than 1600 members," he said. "The vast majority of these police are operating on the front line, doing exactly the sort of work Victorians expect they should be doing."

Across Victoria over the past financial year, robberies rose almost 25 per cent at street level, and were up by more than 18 per cent at licensed venues.

Drug offences fell at street level but rose almost 18 per cent at licensed venues.

Herald Sun

 

[hoptis]

City's big night out of it
Paul Anderson
October 03, 2006 12:00am

IT'S Friday night in Melbourne. A police siren sounds as a pariah drinks from a brown paper bag near nightclubs and boutique bars at the top end of Bourke St.

The street denizen is oblivious to the emergency, whatever it may be, and will remain blissfully unaware as the night brings with it random violence, self-destruction and loss of dignity to some.

Having been founded by a bloke called Batman, Melbourne has a distinct Gotham City feel about it this night.

"Melbourne after dark?" paramedic Alan Eade says rhetorically when asked about the city after hours on weekends. "It's always drunk."

Eade and partner Shane Steegstra, riding ambulance "Central 191", expect this to be another routine Friday night of violence and intoxication in the world's most liveable city.

After responding to several routine calls, it is soon clear that the moon has brought madness to Melbourne.

At 10.35pm, Central 191 receives a call to a possible "drink-spiking epidemic" at the Carlton Crest Hotel's Grand Waldorf ballroom.

Up to 14 pharmaceutical students have fallen ill at a function -- two are unconscious and extremely sick.

When Central 191 arrives, there is shock, confusion and tears among the revellers. The two unconscious patients are loaded into the backs of separate ambulances.

A woman, 19, is in the back of Central 191. She is vomiting and delirious. Her blood pressure is dropping. There is a suggestion the patients are suffering from the drug known as GHB.

There is a sense of urgency as ambulance officers Eade and Steegstra stabilise the woman.

"It wouldn't surprise us if somebody dropped something like GHB in someone's food or drink," Eade later says while mopping vomit from his ambulance outside the Alfred hospital.

"It was too fast (a reaction) for food poisoning. The only way you would describe it, if it is GHB, was that it was a prank."

At 12.20am, Central 191 is diverted from a person with a cut hand to an assault victim with a possible dangerous injury near Southbank.

When Central 191 arrives, a man is lying on his back on Southgate Ave footpath near the corner of Riverside Quay.

His head is set in a pool of blood. A female friend is kneeling and trying to comfort him.

Eade and Steegstra stabilise the man, 34, as police speak to possible eyewitnesses.

The man was punched in an unprovoked attack, fell backwards and hit his head on the footpath.

As the paramedics carefully move the bashed man on to a spinal board, a second assault victim -- holding the left side of his bloodied face -- walks up to the police officers.

He moves his hand to reveal an angry gash above his left eye, possibly dished out by the same moronic person.

The brief description sounds like the same

assailant.

Steegstra checks the second victim's eye wound, telling him he'll need stitches, before driving the first victim to St Vincent's Hospital.

The woman rides along to comfort her bashed friend. Eade gives oxygen and asks the assault victim his name, age, date of birth and what day and month it is. He knows his name but has trouble with the month, and says he cannot remember what happened.

"We'd been to (Irish pub) PJ O'Brien's and were heading home," the woman explains.

"I saw someone connect with him and he just fell to the ground. A guy just decked him. It's unbelievable that human beings can do that to each other."

After admitting the victim to hospital, Steegstra says: "He's going to have a headache and more than likely concussion. This could quite have easily been a fatality, just like David Hookes. All it takes is one punch."

The calls to other ambulances, meanwhile, continue around the city: an assault outside the GPO, an unconscious male in Collingwood, a victim hit in the eye with the butt of a gun in Essendon, and a call for police help to control a belligerent woman.

On the way back into the city after transporting an elderly woman to hospital, Central 191 passes a horde of drunk young men outside a nightspot in Heidelberg .

In a side street, three youths struggle to hold up a mate who has had so much to drink he cannot stand on his own.

None looks older than 16. Steegstra rolls down the window.

"Is he all right?"

"Yeah," comes the reply. "Just had too much to drink."

The petulant drunk notices the ambulance and begins to yell: "F--- off! F--- off!"

The boys promise to get their blithering mate home in a cab, as he lolls on a street-side seat yelling at shadows and jerking like a marionette.

Violence and abuse towards paramedics is nothing new. The day before, a man believed to be high on the illicit drug ice punched and kicked Eade and Steegstra as they tried to help him.

According to Eade, two paramedics on average require medical attention every week. "It's been getting more violent compared to when I joined 11 years ago," he says.

At 3.50am, Central 191 arrives in Windsor Place, an alleyway off Little Collins St.

Hotel staff have found a young woman, about 20, lying unconscious and alone on the footpath among wheelie bins.

She could be drug-affected or drunk -- or both. She has no purse or identification, and may have been robbed.

She is lucky not to have been raped.

Police have done the right thing by rolling her on to her side.

One of the attending cops was on night shift three weeks earlier when a stranger randomly stabbed another man in Flinders Lane.

That victim lay with intestines protruding as an ambulance raced to his aid.

The unknown, unconscious woman is rushed with low blood pressure to St Vincent's. She is shivering and lurching uncontrollably.

"She typified the 'person at risk' classification: anyone not able to look after themselves and who are on their own," Eade says later. "She's probably the sickest person we've seen tonight."

Two hours later, Central 191 responds to a similar call; an unconscious male seemingly defying gravity by sitting like a contortionist cross-legged outside a closed cafe in Lonsdale St. His chin appears pinned to his chest.

Eade and Steegstra approach in their mandatory rubber gloves and protective glasses, in case the patient wakes and spits or vomits.

Eade tries to rouse him.

"Have you had alcohol? Have you had drugs? Pills? Injections?"

The young man, in his early 20s and wearing jeans and a T-shirt, is non-responsive with, according to Eade, pupils "the size of dinner plates".

"That would suggest some sort of stimulant, probably combined with alcohol," Eade says.

The young man is taken to St Vincent's. Steegstra says at the time: "Like most of the patients we've had tonight -- who knows what he's had."

Eade says later: "That patient had actually aspirated (with vomit in his lungs) before we got there."

Meanwhile, the pariah, with his bottle in its brown-paper bag, sleeps soundly out of sight somewhere, oblivious to the madness.

Herald Sun

 

[basix]

My god! Im shocked, Im never leaving the house again it's just too dangerous. Can't risk the random bashings and GHB drink spikings that are obviously the norm.

 

[Bent Mk2]

Crowd control expert Dave Hedgecock

I'm still amazed that the HS still uses Hegdecock as their go-to guy.

 

[lady grey]

My god! Im shocked, Im never leaving the house again it's just too dangerous. Can't risk the random bashings and GHB drink spikings that are obviously the norm.

hehe obviously

 

[ilikeacid]

refused to attend brawls outside nightspots without police help after attacks by drunks and psychotic drug users.

Shit psychotic drug users again!!

The boys promise to get their blithering mate home in a cab, as he lolls on a street-side seat yelling at shadows and jerking like a marionette.

Now thats journalism!
What a waste of paper those articles would have created! What the fuck else do you expect to encounter if you travel around a major city in an ambulance.. tea parties, bruised knees, maybe a cat up a tree? 8) 8) It's the city for fuck sake!! Whats a busy night in melbourne supposed to look like... everyone tucked up in bed by 8:00pm? 8(
It's lucky they're attending minor things like this, imagine a friday night in Chicargo, NY, Berlin, Tokyo, even sydney.. There wasn't one mention of guns in both those pieces of "journalism", I think we're lucky for that.
P.S I hope something bad happens to those fucks at the Herald Sun for constantly using fear as their only way of selling papers!

 

[person]

^
Right on!
Theyd have a field day at any major city cbd, melbourne reminds me of wellington 100% even the streets and suburbs are similiar.. They curved alot of drunken/drug fucked violence due to the amount of cameras installed as well as a service called 'streetwise' and 'drug arm' (fits, free food, drug info etc) Streetwise wear bright yellow clothing and walk around in packed numbers throughout the city 'trouble spots'. Making some of the 'trouble makers' almost stay at home, but then tmost of them end up with curfews (meaning police visit there house on the time theyre supposed to be home, as well as random visits). There was an article in the newspaper a while back, and it was quite funny, they asked people on the street what thew think of the cbd nightlife, and all of them said it was more intimidating when there is a whole bunch of middleclass white males walking down the streets being assholes than the 'club people'/cuba street precinct (n.b. one part of welly cbd there is 'courtney place - where the 'high class - cum wannabes/tourists go, then theres Cuba Street which is very lively, underground and basically where its all at)..

 

[buckaboo1]

Shit psychotic drug users again!!


P.S I hope something bad happens to those fucks at the Herald Sun for constantly using fear as their only way of selling papers!

indeed they deserve something, i dont think its even fear they use nowadays. is it just me, or do all the current affair shows and papers etc seem to be becoming worse than daytime television? re-run after re-run after re-run? let me predict next weeks news: some-one will be murdered, someone will be caught with drugs, some celebrity will have a kid and call it a dumbfuck name, and there'll be a dodgy builder who ripped off his clients and bought shame and disgrace to his family.
play school is more interesting nowadays. tho that might just be that acid i took a coupla hours ago..

 

[ilikeacid]

tho that might just be that acid i took a coupla hours ago..

lol, its a strange world we live in when reality does seem like an acid trip... at least tv's reality..
All hope is not lost though. As a wise moderator once told me "you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time". The more they play the same old stories with the same old agendas people - well at least the majority - will start tuning out, buying another paper and the system will change. But until then....

 

[zaineaol.nu]

Mate, those articles are awesome..

creative writing at its best, i thought i was reading a thriller novel.

lol... what a joke

 

[buck_reed]

Mate, those articles are awesome..

creative writing at its best, i thought i was reading a thriller novel.

lol... what a joke

So, what you guys aren't even going to give it credit for saying that alcohol is a bigger problem than drugs?

Buck

 

[beamers]

come on, pretty much all of those things have happened to me (or I've been a part of them), or I know someone that that has happened to (and this is in Brisbane).

The frequency of these things may not be as much as the article implies, but there is a dark side to going out and I've been burnt and all of my friends have had a night go bad as well for the variety of reasons listed in the article. So lets not be so predictable in our responses.

 

[sushii]

^ I don't think anybody's denying those things happen - but the article (particularly the first one) is way over the top. Binge drinking is popular in teenagers and students will pay for fake ids - well holy shit, what a revelation! It's the typical sensationalist drivel the herald sun prides itself on.

It's lucky they're attending minor things like this, imagine a friday night in Chicargo, NY, Berlin, Tokyo, even sydney.. There wasn't one mention of guns in both those pieces of "journalism", I think we're lucky for that.

Good point. Nothing in the article was particularly shocking - it all sounds fairly typical for a city with 3.5 million people and a healthy nightlife. Not that some of the things they discussed aren't a cause for concern, but it's hardly the downfall of civilised society they're making it out to be.

The use of unlicensed bouncers concerns me a bit though.

 

[sushii]

^ True. What a shame identifying the real problems and finding a solution doesn't sell as many newspapers.....