Results from the latest crackdown on grog-fuelled crime prove that Australia has a culture of boozy violence, with drunken idiots running amok across the nation, a police union says.
The scathing assessment comes after police in NSW arrested 563 people across the state as part of the trans-Tasman Operation Unite, a two-day blitz on public alcohol abuse and related crime which ended on Sunday.
As part of the same operation, police across Australia and in New Zealand also made large numbers of arrests as authorities attempted to hammer home the message that drunken thugs will not be tolerated.
Despite the number of arrests in NSW being the lowest in the two-year history of Operation Unite, the Police Association of NSW (PANSW) slammed the "chaos and mayhem" that it says prevails in cities every weekend.
It also called for new strategies to attack the root causes of alcohol-fuelled violence.
"Operation Unite has proved that our culture of alcohol and violence is out of control, with boozed-up idiots running wild all over the country," PANSW acting president Pat Gooley said in a statement on Sunday.
"We need a comprehensive strategy for tackling alcohol-fuelled violence - one that addresses the causes of the problem, not just the symptoms."
Mr Gooley said tougher laws, such as the NSW government's plan to introduce an offence of being "drunk and disorderly", were a positive step forward.
He also renewed the union's calls for mandatory statewide 3am closing times for pubs and clubs.
The 563 arrests made in NSW under Operation Unite compare with the 640 arrests during the corresponding blitz in December 2009, the 737 in September 2010, and the 723 in December 2010, according to figures released after each operation.
However, NSW Police laid a relatively high ratio of charges (830) during this year's efforts.
Operation Unite's commander, Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford, pointed to the "very cold" weather, but said there were still many people out drinking to excess.
"Until people start getting the message, we'll continue to target licensed premises, we'll continue to target excessive alcohol consumption, and we'll continue to put people before the courts," Mr Clifford said in a statement on Sunday.
An extra 1161 NSW police officers were on duty overnight into Sunday.
Among the incidents, a female police constable used capsicum spray to subdue a 31-year-old man who allegedly tried to punch her in the head after refusing to leave a pub in Bondi Road at Bondi in Sydney's eastern suburbs.
The man was charged with assaulting police, resisting arrest and failing to quit a licensed premises when asked, and is due to appear at Parramatta Bail Court on Sunday.
A 36-year-old woman from Dungog, north of Newcastle, was allegedly caught four times over the drink-drive limit, with three children in the back of her car.
And an 18-year-old man was fined $1000 after allegedly supplying alcohol to a 16-year-old girl at Cecil Hills, in Sydney's west.
The greatest number of arrests occurred in the southwest Sydney police division (103 arrests, 123 charges) and in the Sydney CBD (102 arrests, 157 charges).
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