By Cameron Lucadou-Wells
FIVE people were charged and four young people hospitalised after a brawl at a birthday party held at netball clubrooms in Dandenong last Friday night.
Three police dogs and 21 officers were called to the fights about midnight, and found about 300 young people in and outside the Greaves Reserve clubrooms in west Dandenong.
Officers used capsicum foam to subdue numerous spot-fights involving youths of African, Pacific Islander and Caucasian appearances.
A Sudanese group had hired the venue from Dandenong and District Netball Association. The association were told the event would be a supervised, alcohol-free 16th birthday for 60 people.
Sergeant Roger Child of Dandenong police’s safe suburbs taskforce said the party might have been gate-crashed or ‘‘got out-of-hand through Facebook or Twitter’’.
The five arrested, males and females between 16 and early 20s from Dandenong and Noble Park, were variously charged with behaving in a riotous manner, drunkenness and assault.
An Ambulance Victoria spokesman said the hospitalised victims aged between 14-19 suffered cuts and bruises, and were in a stable condition.
DDNA spokeswoman Christine Ware said the association didn’t allow 18th or 21st-birthday parties, events involving alcohol, or Saturday night events.
‘‘We’re disappointed in the feedback we’ve got. We hired it out for what we thought was a 16th birthday…a non-alcohol, supervised event for 60 people — with a security guard.’’
She said there had been no such incident in the past 15 years. There would now be further limits on who could hire the venue for parties.
At the moment, groups hiring the clubrooms included church groups, language classes, and Muslim women’s groups.
‘‘We’ll have to restrict hire to only members of the [netball] association with another of our members present. It’ll be inhouse and we won’t hire it on Friday or Saturday nights.
‘‘It’s sad because, judging by the number of requests for hiring facilities, there’s always a shortage of venues.’’
She said there were no sign of cans, bottles or broken glass by the time a regional netball tournament was held on Saturday morning.
‘‘If you rolled up then, you wouldn’t have known anything had happened.’’
Sergeant Child recommended party organisers register their events beforehand with police under its Partysafe program.
He said that when a party was registered, police would monitor the party, give advice to organisers beforehand on appropriate levels of security and step in to close it down if it got out of control.
For more information on registering parties, go to partysafe.com.au.
