34 arrested in booze-fuelled wild weekend

Jamie Morton | 10th March 2010

The holding cells at Masterton police station were kept full on Saturday night as officers clamped down on boozing and disorder in the town's central streets.
Police arrested 34 people throughout the day, most for disorder and breaches of the liquor ban.
Senior Sergeant Warwick Burr said the count was ''far greater than usual'' and nearly all those booked were Masterton residents.
While the 50th Golden Shears meant there were more people out in town, the surge in arrests was not directly linked to the event, Mr Burr said.
''If you've got more people in the streets, there's going to be more people detected.''
Most of the alleged offenders, who will be appearing in Masterton District Court over the next week, were aware a liquor ban was in place.
''We had extra police on, including 14 staff from Wellington. While we were obviously disappointed with the number of arrests, it was our intention to stop low-level offending in the hope that no serious incidents would happen _ and none did.''
Mr Burr said another disappointment was that six motorists were caught in a drink-driving blitz across Wairarapa on Friday night.
Two drivers were stopped at a checkpoint in Chapel St, which screened more than 1000 people, and the other four in different parts of the valley.
The weekend was capped off by a pair of linked burglaries in Masterton in the early hours of yesterday.
Mr Burr believed the thieves who broke into a Villa St engineering firm about midnight _ netting only a box of confectionery _ were the same culprits behind a burglary 20 minutes later at the Aratoi Museum of Art and History.