One CCTV camera is permanently pointed at the two main trouble spots: the monument to the war dead and that wooden horse, called Brencis. On the seventh floor of an anonymous office building, a long, well-lit room is the home of the city’s Police Safety Monitoring Department, which controls 70 CCTV cameras watching the streets 24 hours a day.Ī team of officers on 12-hour shifts scan the CCTV pictures and it takes them only an instant to react and alert the tourist police force to any incident as they circle the city in vans. It is not surprising, therefore, that this is the first police force in Europe with a dedicated unit to combat the worst excesses of stag parties. Such activity has been fostered by the rising number of tourists and is of great concern to civic officials who are deeply worried about the effect it is having on their beautiful, ancient city. They are notorious for credit card fraud, extortion scams, prostitution rings and violent mafia types.’ He said the police set up the special force, with multi-lingual officers, after drunk tourists were found causing breaches of the peace, vandalising property and urinating on the city’s Freedom Monument, which honours soldiers killed during the Latvian War of Independence early last century.Ĭooling off: Latvian police are cracking down on drunken revellers 'They started arriving when the budget airlines began flying to Riga nine years ago.’ We have seen some disgusting behaviour from men on stag party jaunts. He says they ‘spell trouble’, adding: ‘We welcome these tourists, but we have to protect our ancient city, too. It operates round the clock and as its chief, Andrejs Aronovs, told me, the easy availability of cheap flights to countries in Eastern Europe such as Latvia means these former Communist cities have become very popular for pre-marriage booze trips. The men were caught by Europe’s first-ever police team to be set up specifically to target drunken stag parties, most of them British. The four young Brits were fined £90 on the spot for hooliganism, before being pushed into the back of a van and driven to their hotel to sober up. Unsteadily, the naked quartet waved and screamed while a fellow carouser recorded the unedifying spectacle on his mobile phone’s camera.īut within 30 seconds, and before they’d had the chance to dismount, a team of uniformed police had swooped to arrest the men and order them to put on their trousers and T-shirts. They quickly stripped to their socks and climbed on top. Party capital: Stag parties are attracted to the Latvian capital Riga by the promise of cheap flights, cheap drinks and attractive womenĪ life-size wooden horse - the mascot of a smart gift shop in the Latvian capital of Riga - was just too tempting to ignore for four drunken British stag revellers.
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