Young Dundee teenagers have been swigging vodka right under the noses of police officers.
The teeny tipplers congregated on the fifth floor of the Bell Street multi-storey car park on Thursday night, right across the road from Tayside Police Headquarters.
Around a dozen young people, boys and girls, were hanging out together in the vast empty space, long since vacated by the business commuters who usually park there during the day.
Judging by their comments, the youngsters were clearly not first-time visitors to the site, which appears to be used as a regular hang out, despite its proximity to police headquarters.
The police have previously posed pouring alcohol down drains and publicised Operation Dry Up, their campaign to seize alcohol from under-age drinkers and dispose of it. They have targeted public parks where young people are known to gather to drink but now have a problem right on their doorstep.
The concrete floor in Bell Street was littered with energy drink cans and vodka bottles were propped against pillars, with no evidence of the area being monitored by officers just a two-minute walk away.
Though drink was on view, the youngsters were friendly and approachable and appeared to be socialising. Nobody was obviously drunk.Vulnerable”We are here to stay out of the rain and away from the gangs,” one young lad said.
Their knowledge of other regular night-time users of the Dundee City Council-owned car park raises the question of what they might be exposed to as potentially vulnerable young people.
They were happy to point out the habits of drug users, saying the “jakies” sleep in the car park stairwell.
A check on the stairs revealed feathers strewn there, as if a down-filled sleeping bag had burst and spilled its contents. There was also a mug left in a stairwell and cigarette butts.
When contacted about the situation, a police spokesperson said “a traffic unit” was being sent to the car park.
Later a police spokeswoman said officers visited the location and found a group of teenagers, one of whom had a bottle containing an unknown liquid in their possession.
The officers noted the names and addresses of the youngsters for follow-up action and disposed of the bottle’s contents. The officers also became aware of a young adult driving a car in the car park in an erratic fashion. They stopped him, warned him about the nature of his driving and moved him on.