Darwin ride along: The NT News accompany Larrakia Nation night patrol through itinerant hot spots
WHETHER it be moving sleeping drunks off the road or finding a toddler in the park at 1am, Larrakia Nation night patroller Peter Angel has seen it all
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WHETHER it be moving sleeping drunks off the road or finding a toddler in the park at 1am, Larrakia Nation night patroller Peter Angel has seen it all after almost a decade on the job.
The veteran patroller covers about 200km most nights driving around Darwin, picking up one drunk client after another and taking them to the sobering up shelter in Berrimah.
Allowing the NT News to peek behind the scenes and ride along on a Friday night patrol, Peter is wary at the wheel.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions out there about what we do,” he said.
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“We’re not the police; we don’t have any powers except the power of persuasion.
“We can’t force drunk people to come with us; some people want to keep drinking, while others need a lot of convincing.
“It’s a tough job, my record is 76 pick-ups in one night, and you do cop some abuse at times.
“The other day, we were called to pick up a guy who was drinking near the Coles Express on Daly St.
“He ended up having a meat cleaver and was threatening everyone with it.
“One of our other patrollers got stabbed in the ear with a pair of scissors once — it went in so deep it scraped his skull.”
Minutes into the patrol, there is a situation.
A visibly drunk woman has been reportedly seen staggering along Lee Point Rd.
Sitting in the passenger seat, fellow night patroller Shaynai Daby radios into police to confirm they’re responding.
On arrival, the woman is cooperative and hops in the back of the Larrakia Nation patrol car.
They drive her to the sobering up shelter where a police car is already dropping off someone else.
However, a staffer at the shelter ends up refusing the woman entry because she has the “sniffles”, a result that has visibly annoyed both Shaynai and Peter.
The pair then drive her back to Royal Darwin Hospital and wait for her to stagger into the Emergency Department.
“Due to the coronavirus, the shelter can knock them back if they’re a bit sick, which can be frustrating and time consuming for us,” Shaynai explained.
“They can also knock them back for being too drunk or aggressive.
“The only other option we have after that is to take them to the police to put them in the watch house or the hospital.
The Berrimah shelter, which is run by Mission Australia, offers 40 beds.
People admitted to the shelter are given a fresh change of clothes and a warm bowl of soup or a cuppa.
Larrakia Nation patrols took more than 2700 people to shelter in the last six months to January.
“Things have been so busy that the shelter is already full by 6pm most nights,” Shaynai said.
“The city has started to get so busy with a lot of countrymen sleeping and drinking everywhere.
“There was a call-out at Stuart Park one night where a mother was drinking in the park with her baby just sitting there at about 1am.
“It can be a stressful job, but every night I feel like I’ve saved somebody’s life.
“The number one priority is the safety of our clients.”
Patrollers blamed an increase in dole payments, the dire remote housing situation and coronavirus safety complacency for the rise in Darwin’s itinerant population in recent months.
“We’ve seen a lot of Katherine and Arnhem Land mob camping around Palmerston,” Shaynai said.
“People from Alice Springs will camp at Mindil Beach, while Tiwi mob camp around Vesteys Beach, East Point and Parap.
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“There’s a mixture of people in the Darwin CBD, and a lot of them have been here for a few years.
“People forget that some of these countrymen can’t go back to their communities because they’ve been kicked out.
“But also, there’s still a lot of people that just don’t want to go home.”
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