It’s “crystal clear” that drunk people can’t distance themselves socially, police officers in London said, after crowds of unmasked pubs filled some of the city’s streets on Saturday night when bars and restaurants reopened for first time since the coronavirus pandemic.
“It was a predictably busy night and confirmed what we knew, alcohol and social estrangement is not a good combination,” the head of the England police union, John Apter, tweeted Sunday.
“What was crystal clear is that drunk people cannot, will not, social distance,” added Apter.
Londoners are supposed to still be around 6 feet away and don’t host meetings of more than six people, even with the reopening of places like pubs, theaters and beauty parlors for the first time in three months.
But photos and video of the chic Soho neighborhood on Saturday showed a rude mockery of the rules.
“Absolute madness,” a Soho man tweeted along with images of the crowds.
Rafal Liszewski, a store manager in Soho, said: “Quickly, everything got out of control, and from 8 to 9 pm it was a proper street party with people dancing and drinking.
“Almost nobody wore masks, and nobody respected social distancing,” he said. “To be honest, with so many people on a street, it was physically impossible.”
Apter, who worked the nightly police shift in the city of Southampton, just outside London, said he dealt with “naked men, class ‘A’ drug possession, happy drunkards, angry drunkards, fights, most angry drunks and someone called him a fascist pig, we tried to help!
Still, he tweeted: “The vast majority of those who were away from home last night were sensible and had a good time without causing problems. The introduction of alcohol causes problems with social distancing, but it is not the majority, far from it ”.
The country’s secretary of health, Matt Hancock, agreed that most people did “the right thing.”
“It was really good to see people and, to a large extent, to a large extent, social estrangement,” he told Sky News.
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