A NZ sport or just a hobby?

[color=blue:9b6f714abc]After a post I made in the Locations/Properties category (?South Auckland) yesterday, here we have another outbreak, this time in Hamilton. Is this a form of recreation for the weekends?[/color:9b6f714abc]

[color=green:9b6f714abc][b:9b6f714abc]Police break up Hamilton brawl involving hundreds [/b:9b6f714abc][/color:9b6f714abc]
03 April 2006
By TAMARA PENNIKET

About 350 young people were involved in an alcohol-fuelled brawl in Hamilton yesterday morning, police say. Police took 30 minutes to stop the fight in an industrial part of Kahikatea Dr that broke out about 1am. They arrested two people - one for disorderly behaviour and the other for breaching the peace.

Police Inspector Wayne Ewers said alcohol was a contributing factor in the incident and police had received "a raft of calls from the public". St John ambulance staff were called but no one was taken to hospital.

Meanwhile, Palmerston North dealt with a second riot in as many weeks at the same property.

On Saturday police in riot gear were injured by shards of glass as they dispersed a crowd of an estimated 200 people who had descended on a flat. Two 14-year-olds were among the four people arrested.

The house was the scene of a riot last weekend, and the flatmates said they expected a call from their landlord.

The big question is ....

Where was TAFFY?

__________
Julian

Knowing him, as far away as possible. [img:193b9bb221]http://www.smilies.smileyville.net/smilies/916.gif[/img:193b9bb221]

Good boy, that Taffy.

[color=orange:90d9fee58d]They're still at it![/color:90d9fee58d]

[color=brown:90d9fee58d][b:90d9fee58d]Hundreds involved in Hamilton brawl [/b:90d9fee58d][/color:90d9fee58d]
09.04.06 1.00pm

Hamilton bars and clubs are being asked to stop serving alcohol to drunk patrons after a huge drunken brawl in the city early this morning. Police said several hundred people were involved in the fight, in Alexandra St after several bars closed about 3am today. The fight continued for about 40 minutes, with several people bitten by police dogs and pepper-sprayed. Ten men were arrested, and more could have been caught had police had enough staff, Hamilton City area commander Paul Carpenter said.

Mr Carpenter said alcohol clearly fuelled the brawl. "It's obvious everyone involved had been drinking heavily and that is going to cause problems," he said. "Bars and clubs in the area must take some responsibility for incidents like this -- the fighting started when the bars closed and we would question the host responsibilities of these establishments. They should not be letting patrons get this drunk and then setting them loose on the rest of the community."

Mr Carpenter said several hundred people lined both sides of Alexandra St, with numerous brawls breaking out. Several were seen walking through the street waving pool cues. All available police in Hamilton were asked to attend the incident but with only about 20 staff present at the height of the brawl, many feared for their safety. Many of the brawlers turned their attention on police once they arrived, Mr Carpenter said.

There were so many involved that arrested people were jumping out of police vans as police were trying to put more people inside, he said. "All these incidents were fuelled by alcohol and aggression. People have to take some real responsibility for their actions."

The 10 arrested were all Hamilton men aged 19 to 26. All have been charged with disorderly behaviour and will appear in court at a date yet to be determined. Mr Carpenter said the brawl came a few hours after five people were arrested following a brawl at a party in suburban Dinsdale.

:icon_rolleyes:

Sounds more and more like the UK every day. Is it some sort of mental disease attacking the teen/early 20's? Do youngsters need groups/gangs to feel a sense of belonging - even for just an evening? Perhaps it is a lack of identity - life was perhaps easier in the past when you were expected to be patriotic to your country and fight for it.

New Zealand is not perfect and has never been perfect. There are plenty of miscreants and crimes, but it still [i:4f25eb530b]feels[/i:4f25eb530b] better than the UK. We are in a small town here about the same size as the one we were in in the UK (both good socio-economic areas) but there have not been as many crimes reported in the local papers as there was in the local UK papers.

During the last year in the UK, we had to put up with (will try to see if I can remember it all) two murders, three rapes, various drunken town centre brawls, roads of cars broken into, garage robberies and one known house robbery, several OAPs conned and robbed, a school crossing patrol lady being shot at with an airpistol, and kids with ASBOs banned from town centre and shops.

Here locally in NZ there has been a house break-in with rape, various burgularies before Christmas (the burgulars were caught and goods handed back to owners), an arson attack on a shop, a two-day spell of shop thieves, and several vehicles broken into. We worried that a local woman had been abducted and killed but she was found hanged. The police seem to deal mostly with domestics, odd drunks, drug users and dealers, car crashes and, oh yes, there is some kid going around leaving his graffiti mark.

Of course, these examples are only our own experience, others will obviously have different ones. Something I will advise on ... if you crash your car make sure you empty it of anything personal or valuable, if you can, or get a family member to do it. A car crashed opposite our house the other night - the two guys inside were thankfully just cut and bruised. However, it was there two nights and you would not believe the amount of people we saw that ransacked it looking for something of value.

:icon_neutral:

Is it that all this fighting and also the large amount of domestic violence we?ve seen a lot of in the NZ press, is fuelled by drink and drugs rather than the people concerned being generally ?bad eggs?? Do you think it would be different if the authorities could get a grip on the drink/drugs situation?

I wonder, in an ideal NZ, how it would be if people kept their drinking to a sensible level and didn?t feel the need to waste money on mind-altering drugs. For a start, there would be more money to go around, as it wouldn?t be thrown away on these indulgences and maybe there would be less thieving by youngsters who sell their ill-gotten gains in order to fund their habit. The jails wouldn't be so overcrowded either. Wouldn?t it be great if the solution was as easy as that?

I think a lot of it depends on what is counted as a 'brawl'. Judging by your reports, it always seems that there are only one or two trouble makers and less than half a dozen actual crimes commited.

For instance, I was watching a documentary on Britain in the late 1950s/1960s the other day. It showed groups of youths, usually in their hundreds, fighting in seaside towns. To me it didn't look like serious crimes were commited, especially by modern British standards, but there were loads of assualts and minor injuries. My uncle was also almost beaten to death by a group of youths in the 1950s in the East End of London. :icon_frown: I think the point I'm trying to make is that a group of drunken youngsters in one country might be considered serious and consitute a criminal act, whilst in another people might not think anything of it.

I think the other point is that every country has crime. I don't believe that any country, past or present, has not suffered from the effects of it. In the past, Britain still had serial killers, rapists, thieves etc. There was still an average of 230 murders every year 50 years ago (compared to around 650 now - though population has increased by 15-20 million). Despite this, communities were still safer, people cared about one another more i.e. their neighbours, and it was, no doubt, a much more pleasant place to live.


Tottefan.

It's been a wild weekend .