Study finds no under-reporting of violence at The Star Sydney
In Australia, an official study has reportedly revealed that security staff at The Star Sydney have not been under-reporting incidents of assault in the wake of the early-2014 introduction of Sydney’s controversial alcohol lockout laws.
According to a report from The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, documents from the Liquor And Gaming New South Wales regulator leaked last month alleged that 75 of 111 violent incidents that took place at the Pyrmont casino from March to August had not resulted in the police being called “despite the severity of the incident involved or the injuries caused to the parties”. These skirmishes were said to have included one clash where a patron broke his leg during an altercation in the Marquee nightclub along with a melee that had comprised up to five patrons.
The newspaper earlier cited Liquor And Gaming New South Wales as declaring that the practice of not reporting assaults at The Star Sydney had painted “an inaccurate picture of the level of violence” associated with the New South Wales casino.
However, The Star Sydney, which is operated by The Star Entertainment Group Limited, responded by stating that the leaked report had contained “inaccurate information, a misunderstanding of the incident reporting process at The Star [Sydney] and [expressed] significantly misplaced concerns that reflect a lack of understanding of The Star [Sydney’s] business”.
This belief has now reportedly been backed up by a new investigation from the New South Wales Bureau Of Crime Statistics And Research that looked at every one of the 278 assaults reported at The Star Sydney since 2012. The report classified these altercations according to who had made the initial report to police and then compared the proportion of complaints made by casino staff over time.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the New South Wales Bureau Of Crime Statistics And Research study found that the proportion of assaults reported by staff at the Sydney casino had actually increased from 56.5% in the two years before the lockout laws were introduced to 60% in the two years after.
“No one expects every minor bump and scuffle to end up in a police assault report but we would have been concerned if the proportion of assault incidents reported to police by staff at The Star [Sydney] had declined,” Don Weatherburn, Director for the New South Wales Bureau Of Crime Statistics And Research, told the newspaper. “As it is we remain of the view that the growth in assaults at The Star [Sydney] since the lockout has up to this point been fairly small.”
Sydney’s lockout laws block admittance or re-entry into venues, bars and clubs in particular areas of the city after 1:30am while enforcing a 3am last-call for the purchase of alcohol although The Star Sydney sits just outside of the affected zones.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the latest research from the New South Wales Bureau Of Crime Statistics And Research moreover revealed that some 20% of assault victims had been security staff at The Star Sydney, which suggested that violence was most likely to occur in the course of evicting patrons or intervening in incidents.