AN ALTONA underage dance party being promoted on Facebook is causing problems associated with an influx of young people coming in to the area, police say.
Hobsons Bay Council last week banned dance parties held at Altona Youth Hall pending a report on the venue’s management.
It said there had been problems with the ‘Tropical Underage’ night, which has a Facebook page.
The page, which lists its business address as the the Altona Youth Hall, has received 604 “likes”, including 77 just this month. The page includes photos of those in attendance.
One person posted that the Altona dance party needed “more bitches”, but that there were “massive sluts” at an under-18s event at a different location.
Hobsons Bay’s Inspector Bill Mathers said numbers of people attending the parties could swell because of social networking.
“It’s an issue for police because you can get large groups of young people coming in to Altona. It means the numbers can escalate.
“Invariably we end up having problems ranging from bad language through to assaults, property damage and dispersing young people after the event. Usually, they try to catch a train or arrange private transportation. But in places like Altona, we don’t have much public transport. From a policing perspective, we discourage it and are against the advertising on Facebook.”
The Tropical Underage page expresses interest in having promoters from schools in Hobsons Bay and Footscray. Earlier posts on the page allow the users to send emails directly to Michael Jones.
Mr Jones, who promotes the Tropical dance party at Altona, said all those who attended his event were local. “Well for 200 kids, I can say they come all within an 8kilometre radius of the venue,” he said. “We do postcode checks.”
– Kate Watson and Goya Dmytryshchak
