Street pastors calm down drunken aggro after closing time

new.spectator.co.uk

18 pointspbowyer6 comments

> Street pastors calm down drunken aggros after closing time

At the risk of opening a Lego-built can of worms, the word aggro should not be pluralised to aggros, as it refers to the activity, not its practitioners.

It's a British colloquialism.

Whoops, that was us. Dropped.

Very interesting point about the difficulty police have in being a "friendly, neutral presence". Is it possible to replicate the "street pastors'" success through police presence, or does the uniform elicit a response that antagonizes potential troublemakers?

I think a uniform is fine, but they have to really be a certain kind of people who see you doing something illegal and be friendly. Otherwise people will treat them with the same suspicion.

I believe dkokelley meant could the police achieve the same result or does their _police_ uniform cause a response among the drinking public that the street pastor uniform does not. In my experience working in the ambulance service, there is a threshold of aggro above which the police struggle to de-escalate (but can still overpower). I can't say if street pastors can do any better as I haven't worked alongside them.

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