The Victorian government’s new public intoxication laws have been blasted by the Police Association after the death of a man in Melbourne’s southwest. The man was refused entry to a sobering up facility, but could not be arrested so was left alone until he was fatally struck by a car.
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00:00This is where the victim lived, and just metres away, on the street in front of his house,
00:08is where he died.
00:09Police were first called here to Black Forest Road in Wyndham Vale around 3 o'clock this
00:14morning to reports of a man lying on the road.
00:19Officers helped the 34-year-old into his home where they tried to help him sober up, even
00:23going as far as making him a bowl of spaghetti.
00:26They called the Collingwood Sobering Up Centre, which was set up following the state's decriminalisation
00:32of public drunkenness in November, but he was refused entry for safety reasons.
00:37The police were forced to leave when they were called to another job.
00:40Less than an hour later, he was hit.
00:42Witnesses tried to help, but he couldn't be saved.
00:45Neighbours say he was a much-loved but troubled man who was let down by the system.
00:50The Police Association has lain the blame squarely at the feet of the government.
00:55I'm confident they would, pre this reform, have arrested that person with the powers
01:00that they had, the circumstances that they described to me, and the situation they were
01:05confronted with.
01:06That person would have been safer, indeed that person would be alive right now.
01:11This needs to be thoroughly and independently investigated.
01:13I am not going to cut across that investigation, that would be deeply inappropriate, deeply
01:19disrespectful to a family today who is grieving the loss of a loved one.
01:24The laws were introduced after the death of an intoxicated woman in police custody.
01:29Now those laws are under heavy scrutiny as police prepare another report for the coroner
01:35and another family grieves their loss.