Police raid drum n’ bass rave in Bristol and fine 13 rule flouters £800

This is the moment police disrupted an illegal drum ‘n’ bass rave in Bristol and handed out £10,400 worth of fines – while elsewhere officers caught 15 women at a Soho pyjama party.

Officers arrived at the house on Tyndalls Park Road in Bristol at 2.30am on Saturday to find more than 50 people inside.

Footage shows a policeman shouting at the revellers to turn off the music before announcing he was seizing the sound system and demanding everyone show him their IDs.

Several people fled but 13 were given £800 penalty notices – after the amount revellers attending illegal gatherings can be fined quadrupled as part of a new clampdown.

In the footage, a reveller is heard shouting ‘police are here, everyone get out,’ as an officer enters the house.

The officer stops a man trying to flee, saying ‘you’re not going anywhere son’, before walking into the kitchen and shouting: ‘Turn the music off, let’s have the lights on, now’.

Six of the revellers also received formal warnings.

In total, Avon and Somerset Police issued 47 fines over the weekend at more than a dozen parties.

Fines for gatherings of 15 people or fewer still stand at £200, with the total doubling for each offence.

At one party, on Brighton Road in Bristol, several people jumped over the garden fence in a bid to escape and others hid inside the property.

Everyone was eventually caught and £200 fines were given to 10 people.

Meanwhile, in London, officers in Soho caught 15 women attending a ‘pyjama party’.

The Met tweeted: ‘On Friday night officers from the West end team were called to a pyjama party on Bateman St, Soho.

’15 females were reported for the consideration of a £200 fine after calls to the area due to the noise. The excuse of ”I thought 15 people were ok” is not good enough.’ 

In a second incident, 24 men were caught at a cannabis cafe in east London and put forward for £200 fines.

As police raided the shop, several of the men began jumping out of windows and onto the roofs of neighbouring buildings. 

Officers gave chase and found a total of 24 men hiding in a void between the buildings.

One of the men was also arrested in relation to immigration offences and taken into custody. He was passed to the Immigration Services.

Chief Inspector Pete Shaw, Covid Lead for Tower Hamlets, said: ‘My officers risked their own lives to apprehend a group of people who appeared to have no care for themselves or for protecting the lives of others with this brazen breach of the current restrictions.’ 

Inspector Ruth Gawler of Avon and Somerset Police said: ‘Millions of people across the country are diligently following the rules and making huge sacrifices to limit the spread of coronavirus.

‘Yet there is clearly a selfish minority who seem to think the rules don’t apply to them and they can go about their lives as normal.’  

The police clampdown on Covid rule-breakers intensified this weekend, 

In Swindon, 23 people were caught at a house party after travelling up to 150 miles to get there. 

Police raided the house in Primrose Close on Saturday night at 9.30pm after neighbours heard loud music coming from inside and saw lines of cars parked along the road.

Wiltshire Police said ‘The officers entered the property via the garden gate and found two men cooking food on a barbecue, with more food and alcohol laid out inside.

‘The homeowner told them it was his birthday.’

The 23 people, including the householder, were each fined £800.    

Meanwhile, more than 70 revellers facing £800 fines after partying on a boat in West London and drivers to the Cotswolds being slapped with £200 penalties for travelling hundreds of miles because ‘it is very hard to go shopping in London’.

Officers across the country broke up at least five illegal parties in Hampshire, Wales and London at the weekend, including an illegal rave thrown at an Airbnb house in Portsmouth which saw 19 partygoers fined £15,200.

The Met dispersed a massive boat party at the back of Powergate Business Park industrial estate on the Grand Union Canal in Ealing at around 11pm on Saturday night, which could now see 72 people handed £800 fines and the event organiser a £10,000 ‘super-fine’.

Cotswolds Police questioned drivers in Lower Slaughter and Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire for conducting 300-mile round trips before handing them Covid tickets – and shaming them on Twitter.

The force tweeted: ‘Another Covid ticket handed out in Lower Slaughter. The drivers excuse for the 300 mile round trip was that it was very hard to go shopping in London. #£200DayOut’. Later the local police unit posted: ‘We thought it was supposed to be lockdown? Apparently not in Bourton?! Two Covid tickets handed out to tourists from London and multiple warnings given’.

In Scotland, Glaswegians who needed rescuing after risking their lives by scaling Ben Nevis in dark and wintry conditions were fined £60 each for flouting Covid restrictions by driving around 100 miles to Fort William.

And in Wales, officers from North Wales Police’s Conwy and Denbigh Rural unit fined two groups of people who travelled to North Wales from England to go sledging and to ‘capture drone footage’.

It comes just weeks after Home Secretary Priti Patel tightened lockdown rules, announcing that anyone attending gatherings of 15 or more people face £800 fines, doubling for each repeat offence up to £6,400.  

The Cotswolds bust came after a group of men were fined by police after travelling to the beauty spot from South Wales over the weekend.

Wildlife crime officer Nick Westmacott said the vehicle was stopped in Bourton-on-the-Water High Street at 11pm.

The officer wrote the vehicle had previously been involved in hare coursing on the A40 at Norleach on Sunday, January 24, and a police national computer marker was placed on the vehicle.

‘Gloucestershire Police Special, in an ANPR equipped vehicle, stop searched the four male occupants for hare coursing evidence,’ he said.

‘Nothing was found, but as they had all travelled from South Wales without a reasonable excuse they were all issued £200 Covid tickets.

‘We have informed Gwent Police who may also want to issue them with Covid tickets for travelling out of Wales without reasonable excuse.’