Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 2. 7th March 1973
Police Harassment
Police Harassment
After the houses were first established they were regularly visited by the police, fun bursting in three or four times a night. One night they came across an old [unclear: oke] whose balls were badly swollen. The only help they offered was the remark, "Been rooting too much have you?". A further example of police harrassment was a call by a Sergeant and a constable who told one of the men living there that if he ever showed his head outside the house then they would arrest him on the slightest charge.
In previous years the police used to conduct a round-up at Christmas time and most of the alcoholics were sent to Mount Crawford for the summer season, keeping the streets clean and respectable for all the happy holiday-makers. Last Christmas was the first that the men at Abel Smith Street had spent free. Even the police have lately recognised the value of the houses and have taken to picking up drunks off the street and dumping them at Abel Smith Street.
Ambulance drivers have often been a bigger hindrance than the police. One night, not too long ago, one of the men needed urgent hospital treatment. When the ambulance driver arrived he took one look at the men and said, "I drive a free ambulance not a bloody cartage truck". This view is typical of many, especially in the hospitals where the men are often refused admission, because they smell of booze. Such attitudes only make the men more bitter about the established methods of dealing with alcoholism, and bitter about the people such as Arnold who claim to be concerned, but whose methods are distrusted and despised.
Arnold believes that the houses in Abel Smith Street, and the others like them dotted around Wellington, make no contribution at all. "How can they help when they merely allow these men, who are chronic alcoholics, to do their drinking in private?" This is a strange attitude when
Arnold says that he gives the men just enough money to keep them in a state above being "tipsy". To anyone who has been to these crash pads, the men there seem to be doing much better than they have under the official means of coping with the problem. At least they are receiving all their Social Security benefit and not losing $10 a week to some mysterious bank account for board and rent which they do not get, or for future medical treatment which they are unlikely to receive.