While thousands of revellers behaved themselves as they enjoyed the Queenstown Winter Festival at the weekend, a handful of drunk people created havoc for emergency services.
The resort's police were expecting a busy weekend but said they were disappointed with the large number of incidents involving local people who had had too much to drink.
Of 25 incidents from the opening of the festival on Friday night until last evening, all but one involved alcohol.
They ranged from dealing with four drunk Cromwell youths who allegedly interfered with a fire engine when it was being used to deal with an emergency call on Friday night to stopping 13 drunk drivers at checkpoints and dealing with alcohol-fuelled violence in the streets.
Sergeant Brian Cameron said the resort's people needed "to have a good, hard look at their own behaviour and attitudes towards alcohol".
"So often [with alcohol-related crime], people look to point the finger at the tourists," he said but there were high numbers of "locals" caught in the weekend's drink-driving operations and involved in fights and disorderly behaviour incidents.
Sgt Cameron said the behaviour of people at Winter Festival events was "very good" but later on, some people who could not "handle their drink" began to cause problems.
The Queenstown Volunteer Fire Brigade called for police assistance on Friday evening when they had trouble getting a 18-year-old Cromwell man off a truck outside the Church St car park.
Senior firefighter Duncan Fisher said the incident had not been malicious but the fire officers attending the incident had not been able to get the man out of the truck.
"They weren't obnoxious towards us . . . they wanted to show off," he said.
"Unfortunately, they were interfering with the truck and also with what we were trying to do."
Several of the man's friends tried to get him out, but when police arrived, many of the bystanders had "hurled abuse", Sgt Cameron said.
He said it was disappointing the behaviour had been directed at emergency services - especially the fire brigade, as it was a voluntary organisation.
"Alcohol was a factor," Sgt Cameron said.
It was also a factor in an incident in which a man received three stitches after being attacked by an unknown assailant on Friday night in Queenstown Mall.
Over the weekend, Queenstown police laid eight disorderly behaviour charges, one assault charge, two charges of possessing an offensive weapon, one possession of cannabis charge and one charge of shoplifting.
