Three councillors take closer look at late-night city

Three Dunedin city councillors took to the streets on Saturday night to familiarise themselves with what goes on in the central city in the wee hours.

Cr Michael Guest said he and Crs John Bezett and Neil Collins did several walkabouts in Dunedin's city centre, interspersed with a briefing from the district police commander, city safety officers, emergency department charge nurses and sitting in on a police shift-change briefing.

The purpose of their outing was to gain personal knowledge of the personal and transport safety issues faced in the city at that time of night, Cr Guest said.

On their first walkabout, about 11pm, they noticed more people were out in the city centre than they had expected, but during their second walkabout, at 12.30pm, they were "amazed" by the number of young people in the central city.

While they had observed many young people behaving "exuberantly", with many of them displaying signs of being drunk, they had not seen any serious disorder or violent behaviour.

Although they were aware a police officer had been assaulted in the Octagon at the time they were out, they had not observed the incident.

The trio had stayed out until about 1.30am, but Cr Guest intended to go out with police again as they had been informed many times that most problems occurred between 2am and 3am.

"It was clear there was potential for real disorder, but we did not see it.

"We ultimately have to decide what we are going to do about the potential problem, but we haven't got any answers to that yet."