Halloween partying pretty tame, say police

While Halloween is typically classified as one of Western’s big party nights, along with Homecoming and St. Patrick’s Day, this past Halloween weekend was a relatively tame affair.

“It was a fairly normal weekend. We had a few additional officers working, but I wouldn’t say it was overly bad,” Elgin Austin, director of Western’s Campus Community Police Service, said. “It was busy on Saturday night with parties and whatnot, but nothing that wasn’t expected.”

Austin noted the police spent the majority of the weekend dealing with the usual trifecta of student crimes. “There were alcohol-related conflicts between people, noise complaints, mischief—mostly those types of things,” he said.

Dennis Rivest, media relations officer for London Police Services, agreed with Austin’s assessment that this Halloween was a fairly calm one. “My estimate would be that offences were not necessarily worse this year than they have been in previous years.”

However, he revealed there were a few incidents of a more serious nature that went on over the weekend. “One example would be we had a pedestrian who was hit by a car.”

Rivest stressed everyone, including students, should take extreme care to be careful and aware on ‘party weekends’ such as Halloween. “If you’re planning on extending your weekend festivities to Halloween night, remember that the police will be out to make sure things don’t get out of hand,” Rivest said. “It’s also important to remember that Reduce Inebriated Driving Everywhere—RIDE—programs are in effect. Just be responsible.”

Austin also explained Campus Police are not planning on fielding any extra patrols or officers on Halloween night itself. “Halloween this year is on a Monday night, so we talked much more about the weekend and the days leading up to Halloween,” he said.