About 100 drunken youths at a 17th birthday party on the Kapiti Coast trashed a house and left a trail of destruction and scared residents in their wake.
Police were called to Matatua Rd, Raumati, at 2am on Saturday to find more than a hundred people aged between 16 and 24 hurling abuse and bottles. They had trashed the party house, breaking 14 windows.
Senior Sergeant Alasdair MacMillan said a 17-year-old was arrested for breaching the peace but there was little five officers could do. "Bottles and other projectiles were thrown at them. I would not expect them to wade in to make wholesale arrests with disregard for their own safety." After trashing the house the mob made its way two kilometres south to a pool complex, leaving a trail of broken glass and damaged property, including a letterbox thrown into a car, and a mufti police vehicle's windscreen which was shattered with a bottle or a hammer.
"It was shocking, chaotic, a prime example of youths not having the maturity or tolerance for alcohol. If they continue this binge drinking, they will have developmental problems," Mr MacMillan said. "They may think it is harmless fun but it is scary. People are killed through alcohol over-indulgence when situations get out of control. Parents should know what their children are doing and set boundaries and conditions."
We doubt that this is an isolated incident, but it's noteworthy given the intended law changes announced yesterday. Youth drinking is a real issue, and something needs to change. We're just not sure what.
What is particularly worrying though is the mindless violence and destruction of property. We went to numerous parties in our mis-spent youth, where copious quantities of beer were consumed. But we certainly never trashed a place we were visiting. There's little doubt that our values around other people's property have changed. Add alcohol to the mix, and stories such as the one above are all too prevalent.
So where to next? That is the problem facing this government, and those that follow. Attitudes have changed hugely in little more than a generation, coupled with a general loss of respect for anything which represents authority or the establishment. Reversing those attitudes is a Herculian task. We not so naive as to believe that yesterdays alcohol law reform announcements will be some sort of panacea, but we would hope that they are at the very least a signal that parents need to take some responsibility for the behaviour of their children.
8 comments:
Have things really changed that much. I recall being at an after rugby party after a match in Central Hawkes Bay in 1967. It was a bit cold so one of the local guys (opposition team) took a door of the hinges, smashed it up and used the wood to stoke the fire.
PDM, we burnt down houses in Dunedin it got so cold, no just joking, only couches!
Anyway, the change in Alcohol atitude needs to be done incrementaly, like smoking, not cold turkey which won't work. You don't change society's attitudes overnight so the long view needs to be taken.
Anyway the wingnuts at kiwiblog are all raging so the changes must be about right.
"If ever evidence was needed to support the government's alcohol law reforms, especially the split purchase age and the parental consent provisions"
Predictable response from a National party supporter.
How about the enormous amount of evidence that contradicts Key's convenient refusal to do anything real about the bulk of the problem which lies with older drinkers.
To hear you cheering Key for getting stuck into 'yoof' marks you as a curmudgeon.
Another copout from a government of wimps.
Who said National was the party of individual responsibility?
No, maybe in the past but they are cowards these days.
This incident had nothing at all to do with booze except that booze supplied the bottles.
The attitude of young people is set by what they see and hear and that is mostly anti-everything.
Noise, pretending to be music, preaching hate and destruction, electronic games that are simply destruction, movies that depend on hate and death to "entertain", heroes that are nastier than the villains of bygone eras and people who should know better stirring things up by suggesting that these people have been hard done by because their parents are black/brown/poor for their own disgusting purposes.
Add freely available drugs (of which alcohol is only a minor part) to this angry mob and something has to give.
To use this as an example of why one very minor component (and one of the best things man - everywhere and at all times since they climbed down out of the trees- has invented) is nothing short of dishonest.
Shame on you!
@ Tinman - point taken. I DID try to hint at societal decay, but you have done it far more eloquently that I ever could. Maybe you should have a "guest rant" from time to time ...
How about the enormous amount of evidence that contradicts Key's convenient refusal to do anything real about the bulk of the problem which lies with older drinkers.
Maximum purchasing age?
Gin rationing?
Any more good ideas, Robert?
Bobux - setting the blod alcohol limit at a realistic level.
Steven Joyce behind the wheel with 3/4 of a bottle of wine inside him shut Simon Power up fast.
Would you get into the passengers seat if Joyce was at the wheel?
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