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A police officer patrolling a town centre has given a frank account of what it is like dealing with alcohol-related problems in the area.
Having covered Chatham for the past year, PC Simon Ince said things are improving – but went on to paint a rather bleak picture of the incidents taking place on a near-daily basis.
PC Ince was invited to a licensing hearing panel meeting at Medway Council on Tuesday to share exactly what is going on in the High Street and surrounding areas.
His revelations come after councillors decided to deny a “struggling” business the chance to sell alcohol amid fears it would attract more street drinkers to the area.
He told members: “There’s a lot of progress that’s been made in Chatham town centre generally – with the homelessness, the begging, the drinking – we are getting there, but it’s still an ongoing problem.
“Almost daily I have to pull away people’s drinks on the High Street, which is quite often confrontational and done in front of children. That’s unavoidable.
“Most of the crime and anti-social behaviour in the High Street is alcohol-related as it lowers people’s thresholds. We’ve got a lot of people with alcohol dependence, and a lot of beggars are dependant on either drugs or alcohol.”
The officer said he was attending grievous bodily harm and assault incidents related to alcohol “weekly”, with a female street drinker recently suffering a fractured cheekbone while in the town centre.
He also claimed more dependant people were attracted to the area because of the amount of businesses providing alcohol, as well as the number of food vendors.
PC Ince added: “Support group Turning Point are really battling to try to get these people the help they need, but having more and more licenced premises is making it harder and harder to manage.
“Even Iceland need to have people on the door, purely because of the people that are drawn there. As a result, their security staff are often getting assaulted by people wanting to get their alcohol.”
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