POLICE are stepping up patrols in a bid to curb increasing reports of drink-fuelled yobbery on the streets of a community.

Officers have been meeting fedup residents from the Polygon area of the city who say their lives are being blighted by late-night noise and drunken behaviour.

It comes as Prime Minister David Cameron has promised a blitz on the scourge of public drunkenness and the huge public health bill caused by alcohol abuse.

As reported in yesterday’s Daily Echo, Southampton civic chiefs have said they would welcome USstyle “drunk tanks”

in the city to allow police to haul boozed-up revellers off the streets and into cells to sober up.

Police have promised action in the Polygon after being handed residents’ footage of young people’s alcohol-fuelled antisocial behaviour around the community that residents have dubbed a “student ghetto”.

Video clips The video clips show them screaming, shouting, swearing and kicking over bins late in the evening and in the early hours of the morning after drinking sessions in the city’s night spots.

Solent and Southampton universities say students are not to blame for the nuisance behaviour but Hampshire police are clamping down.

Sgt Simon Wood, from Polygon Safer Neigbourhoods team, said: “Reducing night-time economy noise nuisance in the Polygon area is a current neighbourhood priority. Subsequently, additional patrols have and continue to be carried out around Bedford Place and Polygon area at peak times in an effort to tackle and reduce the nuisance.”

Ashley Richie, who lives in Kenilworth Road said he was constantly woken up and last week had his car damaged. He said: “It feels like Beirut. They are just shouting and bawling, it is so nasty and you can’t sleep.”

M u m - o f - t h r e e Karina Rudkin, 37, of Milton Road, said: “It is horrendous. I am on sleeping medication because of the noise. I dread the summer when you can’t leave your windows open.”

She said her nine-year-old daughter Zoe was left with a graze on her leg after falling on broken glass strewn over the pavement last weekend.

As reported in the Daily Echo, 62-year-old Pat Othen said she was quitting her ornate, red brick, Edwardian terraced house in Kenilworth Road where the CCTV footage was shot because she can no longer cope.

Solent University said it was working with police, city council, residents, letting agents and local businesses to help foster good relations between students and the local community through campaigns and regular information and advice events.

A new awareness scheme Southampton Student Harmony, has also been introduced to encourage neighbourliness.

• Due to a technical issue, we are unable to provide the video footage associated with this story.