The recent mayhem that unfolded in Paceville was an incident just waiting to happen. The fact that the perpetrator was Libyan does not make a blind bit of difference to the fact that we have a nightlife area where the explosive cocktail of alcohol, drugs and masses of people finally exploded.
Facts are facts. Thousands of people head into Malta’s nightlife Mecca every weekend, and every night in summer. Over the years, the police presence there has increased, but nowhere near enough as to deal with the massive influx of problems that occur there.
People who frequent the area say it is a running joke that by the time the police respond to something from their fixed point in the square, the whole affair moves on to another area and the altercation continues unaddressed. Others say that in the event that the police do actually respond in time, another incident breaks out somewhere else and they are called away.
When it is factored in that nightclub bouncers can act with impunity, we basically have the heavies with their own door policies and the police only intervene when they are called in by them.
The police officers themselves cannot be blamed. They are vastly outnumbered and often put in very intimidating positions where they have to deal with scuffles involving weapons – makeshift or otherwise.
There is only one immediate solution. The police need to somehow bolster their numbers in the area, for starters. As things stand, police officers from the Drug Squad do separate rounds to those in uniform, and while there is obviously contact between the two, more collaboration is needed. In addition, officers definitely need more training, in dealing with aggressive people who are either drunk or under the influence of drugs. A classic model would be that of Amsterdam, or London, where police officers are constantly doing the rounds. They are largely passive, but are trained to look out for any sign of trouble and make immediate arrests – even if temporary. The secret is in the training, as soon as officers in these cities see a potential threat, they are very quickly restrained and put into a cooling tank until they come back to their senses. Arrests and court appearances are thus avoided, sparing time and resources for the police themselves.
As usual, it is a case of Malta reacting, rather than being proactive. Paceville is a powder-keg which has been smouldering away for years. We have seen some pretty barbaric incidents over the last couple of decades, including people that have been killed by ‘king punches’ where one shot can literally kill. Now we have seen a youth running amok with a knife, slashing at people who got in his way. As the drug trade diversifies, and the deadly mixes of alcohol and synthetic drugs manifests in ever increasingly brazen and violent behaviour, the issue needs to be taken by the horns. The solutions are multi-pronged, but by far the most pressing need is for more police officers to be doing the rounds and for them to be better trained with all the resources that they need to deal with any signs of trouble. An extensive CCTV system which could be monitored real time from a remote location and information being relayed over the radio to police officers on duty could also direct them to potential trouble spots before the situation boils over.