Police investigating Summernats incidents shared to social media

Several alleged altercations at this year’s Summernats 36 have been filmed and shared to social media, appearing to involve both patrons and security guards.

The alleged brawl apparently took place at Exhibition Park on Saturday (6 January) between attendees and staff who wore pink vests with the words ‘crowd safety’ on them.

In one video, a guard allegedly throws a punch at someone before jumping backwards and then beckoning forwards.

Another allegedly captures pushing and shoving and patrons being knocked over.

A third allegedly shows a yellow vest-wearing guard with the word ‘security’ on the back dragging a man on a road.

An ACT Policing spokesperson said police were aware of an incident that occurred on Saturday afternoon inside EPIC.

“Investigations into the incident are ongoing and no arrests have been made at this time,” the spokesperson said.

“No further comment will be made while investigations are ongoing.”

Summernats co-owner Andy Lopez told Region the alleged incident was the last thing he wanted to see at the event.

“No matter what led up to it, the outcome was unacceptable,” he said.

“We will make sure that we learn from it.”

He said the event’s security were very experienced operators and “what happened is an outlier”.

“The incident that happened on Saturday arvo is not what we are about and certainly not what we want to see at Summernats,” Mr Lopez said.

He said Summernats had begun investigating the incident, which was a high priority for the organisers.

He expected he would publicly share whatever learnings came out of the investigation.

Mr Lopez said crowd behaviour was generally very good this year.

Out of 130,000 spectators through the gates and 2500 entrant cars, there were 20 spectator evictions and 84 car evictions.

He was pleased the car evictions had reduced from last year and said the low number of spectator evictions was “pretty remarkable” given the size of the crowd.

Aside from Saturday’s alleged incident, Mr Lopez said this year’s Summernats had been terrific. Saturday had been the event’s biggest day ever.

“It was such a good vibe over the weekend,” he said.

“She’s a wild old ride is the Summernats. It’s a big few days … so people go home, I think, feeling like they had an amazing weekend but a bit buckled!

“It’s a mega event and it comes together because so many people work really, really hard on it.”