Q07061

Invercargill Teenage Drinking

It is a widely known fact in Invercargill, Perhaps all of Southland that every weekend many teenage students attend parties all over the city. Many people often turn a blind eye to the “problem” of underage drinkers on the basis that they are dubbed “a waste of taxpayer money” causing problems and disruptions among society. Many people often complain about the irresponsibility of the teenagers attending these parties, but infact, the people who attend these parties do all they can do to keep them safe.

Often around midnight complaints roll into the police station about youth being to loud and disruptive, but these people who complain can not see what is going on behind the fence of the party, which, is very responsible as the hosts of the parties will often tell people to get back inside the gate or leave the party and get off the street. The owner of the party will then tell everyone there to stay in the gate or leave now, keeping the party under control, but before the complainers can get the chance to see all this the police are rung and many people who are following the rules and having a good time are forced to leave, often by force when explaining there point to the police. The owner, who is often very responsible takes the blame although it was ruined by a few people who could not wait that extra five minutes to see the people loitering at there gates or footpath by there house either leave the party or re enter the gate.

Many people will complain that the tax money they pay is wasted on youth drinking as their money is wasted on police patrolling the parties “keeping everything in line” as they will say. This is simply not the case as many incidents that occur at night time at these parties is often started by the police who barge onto the property with no warrant and start to grab people with a fair amount of force and drag them back to their police cars, throw them inside the car and then walk off to go and get the next unlucky victim. If the police asked people to leave the parties instead of technically assaulting and harassing them they would be surprised to see that 95% of people asked would leave the party and not complain about it. The real waste of tax payer money is not the people attending these parties it is how they are being patrolled. A simple solution for this would be to have the police know in advance when a party is going to be happening and they must receive a set amount of complaints before they come to the parties and even then instead of using force asking politely for the people in attendance to “move along”. The results would be very shocking as many of the teenagers would leave and go home without any fuss.

The people in Invercargill are very mean when it comes to making assumptions about things they have no knowledge about. While it is true that teenagers drinking is not the sort of image that we want the rest of the nation and perhaps world to see, do we want the nation and rest of the world to see a nation where the police are often brutally treating the teenagers trying to have a good time? The fact of the matter is that teenage drinkers are often responsible when it comes to drinking, look out for one another and do not cause a nuisance, those who do cause a nuisance to the public will usually be walking home talking to there friends loudly and the noise passes after a few seconds so there is nothing to say that the people drinking are irresponsible as they travel in groups, keep each other in line and go out of there way to avoid trouble.

In conclusion, do we really want to be the world wide face of police brutality? The public needs to be aware that teenagers are extremely responsible when it comes to drinking and that they go out of their way to keep everyone happy and each other in line, teenager’s show respect day in and day out, show them some respect and leave teenagers alone.