Oxford Street options
If it’s true that police and council are unable to act to solve Oxford St’s violence problem, then we may need to take things into our own hands.
But while protests and marches may be effective in dealing with governments, ones aiming at taking back the street from criminal thugs may only provoke further violence from them. They may scatter when we come in numbers but they’ll still get us when we’re alone.
No, we need to go to the heart of the problem here, which is the contradiction that Oxford St has become: an entertainment strip now claimed by two diametrically opposite groups of people – gay and lesbian people and gay-friendly straights, and homophobic thugs from the suburbs.
Though many SSO readers have laid the blame on straights in blanket terms, it’s a particular kind who are the problem, with distinct tastes in clothes and cars that set them apart, who see violence as a form of recreation and who frequent a handful of venues we all know and loathe.
The ban on inside smoking has probably compounded the problem, as it means they spend more of their time on the street, and the long queues outside these venues do not help either.
But if it’s true that doormen and staff at these venues are standing by while their patrons abuse and assault passers-by, then the owners of these venues need to be made aware of their responsibilities. They need to make clear to their clientele they will be ejected on the spot, refused entry or banned permanently if they engage in antisocial and anti-gay behaviour. If they can’t get in they’ll start going somewhere else.
And I am sure that if a coalition of local businesses came together and told these owners they could expect mass formal complaints every time their liquor licence came up for renewal, or their hours of trading reconsidered, or they lodged a development application, they would get the message fast.
On top of this, if the violence problem is hurting them, these local businesses should consider clubbing together to hire teams of roving security guards. They might not need to be there every night – just the busy ones and during the peak problem hours. Let’s say four teams of two, two each side, walking in opposite directions doing constant laps of the strip, and identified as Oxford Street precinct security.
Unfortunately, with at least one of these venues, problem patrons seem to be the only clientele they serve. And if that’s the case, or management lacks the will to act, then more drastic steps may need to be taken – action that will require us to ask some hard questions about how much we really love the Golden Mile.
And that I’ll save for next week.
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