Police close Birmingham gay club after ‘violence’

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West Midlands police have said drunken violence was the reason they closed a gay club in Birmingham on Friday night.

Club DV8, on Kent Street in the city’s gay village, was asked by police to close early due to “substantial and widespread drunken disorder”.

More than 600 revellers were in the nightclub for an all-inclusive drinks promotion which the club has run for several years.

Superintendent Matt Ward told the Birmingham Mail: “Whilst Club DV8 has successfully operated drinks promotions in the past, the officers deployed were left in no doubt that on this occasion the club and its staff had lost complete control of the event.

“The amounts of alcohol being drunk were not only irresponsible but were also posing considerable danger to staff, customers, police officers and, most importantly, members of the public.”

According to police, officers dealt with a 21-year-old man with a fractured jaw and another claiming to have been head-butted. They also witnessed people urinating and vomiting in the street as well as random outbreaks of violence.

Club licensee Mandy Young said she didn’t want to comment until she had met with police.

However, commentators on local gay message boards have suggested that police were “heavy-handed”, citing a 2007 raid on a gay pub in the city.

After a tip-off in the form of an anonymous letter, police raided The Fountain Inn and found a room of people watching hard-core pornography.

Following the search, police applied to the council to have the pub’s licence withdrawn.

Although their application was rejected, the committee in charge of the case imposed 11 conditions on The Fountain Inn.

These included use of CCTV in line with the licence conditions, no entry to under-18s and no adult entertainment to be shown on the premises.

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