Hardly A Rum Situation
Newcastle Herald
Monday March 12, 2007
HE was extremely intoxicated, the big fellow told the judge last week, when he bashed a ballet dancer in an inner-Newcastle street one midnight last year, and one paragraph later in this paper's news report of that case you will have read that after the bashing he and his mates continued drinking at the Ducks Nuts Hotel.
But isn't it illegal for a publican to supply alcohol to an intoxicated person? Or, for that matter, to have an intoxicated person on the licensed premises? Yes.The prosecutor in the case seemed to have that in mind when she put to Dylan McCook that he was, he said, extremely intoxicated yet he was still served alcohol. Yes, he replied, he and his friends were still drinking rum.Judge Ralph Coolahan mentioned the claim of intoxication in his decision reducing a lower court's sentence of four months' jail to two months for what he described as "a very serious, unprovoked" assault. The assault of the noted ballet dancer Adam Blanch forced him to withdraw from performing the next night.As the judge said, and as this paper's readers know, such assaults in Newcastle have become more than a rare occurrence.I phoned Newcastle police chief superintendent Charles Haggett, who referred me to Newcastle acting crime manager Peter Jenner, both of whom are under pressure as a result of increasing assaults in inner Newcastle's streets and both of whom seemed to appreciate the point in my asking whether the Ducks Nuts publican had been charged with having an intoxicated person in the hotel.It must be emphasised that the claim of extreme intoxication was made by the thug, not by the police.Detective Sergeant Jenner referred me to Newcastle licensing supervisor Paul Tapley, who told me that no action had been taken against the Ducks Nuts but that if a credible witness emerged to support McCook's claim that he was drinking at the Ducks Nuts while intoxicated the police would "give due consideration" to charging the publican. The first essential test of the credibility of such a witness would be, by the way, sobriety.What, I asked Sergeant Tapley, is the definition of intoxication used by the police? There was no definition in the Liquor Act, he told me, but police regarded someone well to seriously affected by alcohol, not simply happy and loud, as intoxicated.Later, in answer to another question, Sergeant Tapley told me that in the past 12 months Newcastle licensing police had taken action against three hotels for, allegedly, having an intoxicated person in the hotel, and that two of those cases, against The Crown and Anchor Hotel and The Great Northern Hotel, were before the courts now. He said the licensing police could do better in this field.I phoned the Ducks Nut licensee, Vanessa Loades, and asked whether it was possible that an extremely intoxicated Dylan McCook had been in her hotel shortly after midnight on Saturday, June 3.Ms Loades, whose hotel is open until 5am, said that it was not possible, that "of course we don't allow intoxicated people on the premises", and that she was angry that McCook could make such a claim in court."It's very hard to believe that if they were on our premises intoxicated we would not have been charged or cautioned," Ms Loades told me. "If we had them on the premises and we weren't charged the police would not have been doing their job, would they?"In any event, Ms Loades said that McCook and his friends were not in the hotel on June 3 because the police had come looking for the assailants and not found them. The police were very thorough and doing a great job, she added.The very thorough police who did find McCook and a co-offender that night stated in their report that they found them in the Ducks Nuts Hotel, which was also stated in evidence to the court.In our news reports last week of the mounting danger and violence in inner Newcastle's streets, acting crime manager Peter Jenner said alcohol was involved in more than 90 per cent of reported inner-city assaults.jcorbett@theherald.com.au
© 2007 Newcastle Herald