'Binge drinkers are not addicts, they are drunken idiots who go out with the intention of causing a fight,' argues inner city PC 'David Copperfield.'
I'm an ordinary policeman working in a medium-sized town. I work shifts and I am a one of a team of response officers, who answer calls from the public, anything from the simple, 'I've murdered my wife' to the infinitely more complex, 'My wife has locked me out of the house and won't give me my stuff back.' If you call the police, the chances are that you will end up getting someone like me.
On a Saturday night, I may well be policing our town centre. From a police perspective, the new licensing laws haven't made a great deal of difference yet, but it's probably too early to tell. We'll find out after the summer when people are thirstier and the weather warmer.
We don't really get going until after about 11pm when the mood of the town centre changes and people become more argumentative and less forgiving. Couples shout at each other in the street while their respective friends attempt to restrain them, groups of males confront each other and arguments quickly escalate. Before long, people start fighting and we have to get out of the van and start arresting people, trying to make ourselves heard over the din of the music being played by the nightclubs into the street. For the most part, both victims and offenders know what they're letting themselves in for: one week someone will get arrested, the following week he'll end up getting punched in the face, but occasionally innocent members of the public end up getting involved.
Such behaviour is called 'binge drinking' and it's nothing new. The scenes in our town centres are straight out of a Hogarth print, only now it's alcopops and lager instead of gin. What has changed is people now believe that they have a right to do exactly as they want. Whether it's swearing at the top of their voice or urinating in the street, they seem to think that because they are drunk they no longer need to behave themselves.
Binge drinkers used to be called violent drunks, but now they're diagnosed with an addiction which, I'm told, requires treatment, not punishment. I deal with addicts on a regular basis: alcoholics, drug addicts and women who confess a compulsion to have sex with inappropriate men. The one thing they all have in common is that they all refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Binge drinkers, or at least the ones I arrest on a Saturday night are the same: they drink too much then get into a fight and cannot see the connection between the two. Binge drinkers are not addicts, they are drunken idiots who go out with the intention of causing a fight.
Outside the town centre, on any night of the week, I'll deal with at least one domestic incident. I'll bet my pension that one, other or all of the parties involved will be drunk. Just as when I arrest people for wrestling in the High Street, they will fall asleep, dead drunk in their cell almost as soon as the door slams, as soon as I go to a domestic I'm sure there will be several cans of empty extra-strength lager in the kitchen.
(David Copperfield appears courtesy of The First Post where he is a regular writer. David Copperfield is a pen name.)
