Christmas party night in Broad Street judged a huge success
Dec 22 2009 by Jane Tyler, Birmingham Mail
Jane Tyler joins the police and revellers on the busiest Friday night of the year on Birmingham's Broad Street
THE temperature was five below zero but the girl tottering precariously on stilettoes in front of me was dressed more for downtown Miami than Birmingham city centre.
Wearing a tiny bottom-skimming miniskirt, boob tube, bare fake-tanned legs and a Santa hat, she was not only freezing but also blind drunk.
Clinging on to her equally-sozzled friend, she was in good company. As the party season swung into action with a vengeance, the pavements of Broad Street were filled with lurching drunken young men and women, all zig-zagging their way along the icy pavements.
But an army of police officers were on hand to ensure it did not end in carnage.
The “Battle of Broad Street” was a massive zero-tolerance crackdown on party-goers in Birmingham city centre.
The run-up to Christmas is packed with the busiest party nights of the year. And to ensure the revellers’ drunken antics did not get out of hand, West Midlands Police have been flooding the city centre with extra officers to hammer home the zero-tolerance message.
On a normal busy night they would have between 14 and 18 officers on duty in the city centre; on “Super Friday” this was doubled to 25.
Inspector Andy Bridgewater, the officer in charge that evening, said they expected about 40,000 people to converge on Broad Street alone that night, not just for the pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants, but also to concerts and shows at the Birmingham Rep, ICC, Symphony Hall and at private functions at hotels.
“The Friday before Christmas is probably our busiest night of the year, only followed by New Year’s Eve, St Patrick’s Day and Gay Pride,” he said.
The evening’s policing began with a check on the CCTV cameras at Steelhouse Lane police station. The CCTV suite has walls lined with banks of monitors watching the action across the centre from around 150 “eyes in the sky”. It was only 10pm and the only sign it was Christmas party night was a lone Santa Claus staggering forlornly along New Street. With all 25 officers dispatched to key locations around the city, we headed out with Insp Bridgewater to see how they were getting on.
And it was surprisingly quiet.
Groups of officers were waiting around poised to leap into action at the first sign of trouble, but they were not needed.
By now the temperature had dropped to five below (a reveller helpfully showed us the temperature by calling up the Met Office “app” on his iPhone) and that played a factor. Freezing conditions put another officer on the streets – PC Frost.
“Inclement weather makes our job easier,” Insp Bridgewater said. “Rain or freezing temperatures mean people come out of the clubs and bars and don’t want to hang around – they just want to get home.”
