Criticism for PSNI after ‘boy racer’ action blocks north coast town

The picturesque north coast town has for decades played host to an unofficial but popular Sunday ‘cruise’, with car enthusiasts slowly circling the promenade area and admiring one another’s vehicles — sometimes expensive or heavily modified.

But on Sunday, police enforced a number of checkpoints to prevent traffic coming into the area almost entirely.

DUP MLA Trevor Clarke, a member of the Policing Board, raised concerns about the tactics used over the Bank Holiday weekend.

He told the News Letter he spoke with officers on the ground and was informed the operation was carried out in response to “boy racers” causing trouble.

But the South Antrim MLA, who was in the area to enjoy the last bank holiday weekend of the summer, believes blocking the area off to all traffic was not the right approach.

“It didn’t make much sense,” he said.

Mr Clarke, who first raised his concerns on social media website Twitter, continued: “It appears from my Twitter account today that some people were actually happy with the police’s actions, but there were many people who were unhappy because the long queues meant they couldn’t get into the town.

“If there were motoring offences being committed it would have been better for police to get out onto the street and get amongst those committing the offences.

“They could have done that and allowed everyone else to enjoy their night.”

Mr Clarke continued: “Perhaps there was some loutish behaviour but, again, it would have been better to get into the middle of it and tackle them, rather than doing what they did and that was to penalise everybody.

“I spoke with the police when they were on the ground because I was very surprised that they took the course of action that they did. I thought they were going to tell me it was because of coronavirus but they didn’t, they told me it was about the boy racers. They didn’t mention coronavirus.”

Mr Clarke said restricting access to the town could hurt businesses.

“I’m not sure what business would want to restrict people coming into the town,” he said. “Really what you are doing with this is moving the people elsewhere. Those people are not coming back into Portstewart, they are going somewhere else.”