Sydney brawls its way into Christmas

Sydney celebrated the silly season last Saturday night with wild public brawls, bottles thrown at cars, a naked man attempting to strangle his partner in The Rocks, a Senior Constable head-butted in Rosehill and a person stabbed with a broken glass in an Ultimo hotel – all during Operation Unite which saw 1400 extra police on duty.

Over the weekend police arrested 640 people, laid 1025 charges and caught 374 drink-drivers during 48,162 breath-tests.

Operation Unite Commander, Assistant Commissioner Frank Mennilli, was “staggered” that so many ignored the very public warnings preceding the police blitz.

“We had a large series of unrelated brawls and assaults occur within the Sydney CBD, including a wild melee involving around a dozen men … opposite the George Street cinema strip,” he said.

“Another brawl involving around 20 males broke out about 2.30am at Darling Harbour, resulting in further arrests.

“Bottles were thrown randomly at vehicles, male and female youths were involved in a large street brawl at Woolloomooloo while two teenage girls were arrested over an assault and robbery in Hyde Park.

“During this operation my officers were spat on, abused and king-hit,” he said.

“Two officers were hospitalised on the first night of the operation while clearing the streets of drunken offenders and protecting the community. One of the officers suffered a broken nose.

“What is really distressing is the number of underage people congregating in public, in parks and the like, with the sole purpose of drinking themselves into a stupor.

“We’re sick of this booze-til-you-drop culture and so is the public.”

“There’s no excuse for this sort of criminality and as far as the police are concerned, the gloves are off,” Mr Mennilli said. “we’re not going to let drunken thugs terrorise the streets of our towns and cities.”

by Michael Gormly