We spent a night on the beat with ACT Policing's territory targeting team

Welcome to a Saturday in Civic and surrounds - and that's not even the half of it for the ACT Policing team tasked with keeping Canberra's busiest nightspots safe each weekend.

While the booze is flowing into the early hours each Sunday morning, nine cops from the territory targeting team are patrolling with the goal of heading off trouble before it begins.

Two of them - Acting Sergeant Jacob Eiffert and Constable Cameron Breakey - gave the Sunday Canberra Times a front row seat, in the back seat of their cop car, late last month as they cruised the streets around the city.

It's the end of university O Week and the officers are expecting big crowds as they collect this reporter and a photographer from City Police Station at 10pm.

We soon hit the road to Braddon, where hordes of revellers typically visit bars like Hopscotch before filtering down to Civic as the night goes on.

Our first order of business ends takes us back to centre of town, where Blackbird security guards have turned away a group of young people trying to enter with suspected fake IDs.

The teenagers have gone by the time we turn up but we're soon approached in the same area by a man, who worriedly points out a clubgoer sitting on an Alinga Street bench.

"I don't think he has any friends," the man says, prompting the officers to check on him.

Keen to make sure the heavily intoxicated young man doesn't end up posing a danger to himself or others as the night progresses, the officers check on him and discover he can barely stand up.

It turns out he does have some friends and Acting Sergeant Eiffert uses the man's phone to contact them, but they are apparently in no great hurry to come and look after him because they are "on the dancefloor".

The officers therefore book the man an Uber and support him as he wobbles to the rideshare vehicle for a trip to his home, where we are told the people he lives with will be waiting for him.

With the man out of harm's way, we decide to drive out to Kingston to check on the licensed venues in and around the foreshore before things really ramp up in Civic.

Trouble doesn't take long to come to us as a distinctive Holden Statesman - white but with a black bonnet - does a burnout and comes hurtling around a roundabout at high speed just after midnight.

Our lights and sirens go on but the offender's foot goes straight to the floor and we spend the next 10 minutes or so looking for the car, which was gone in a flash.

It eventually goes tearing past us again on Commonwealth Avenue, heading back towards Civic, at a speed most likely exceeding 200km/h.

We receive word within minutes that the same car has been spotted flying through Belconnen, so we return to the city to join the team's other units, who had earlier been involved in helping track the movements of a different pursuit driver who was arrested after a lengthy chase.

On the way back, we hear about how one of the other crews also had to pepper-spray someone in order to make an arrest and quell some trouble near the East Row McDonald's, and Acting Sergeant Eiffert explains some of the team's proactive strategies.

He details how the team conducts checks on licensed venues to make sure, for example, that bartenders are trained on the responsible service of alcohol and ensure compliance with risk assessment management plans, which cover things like security staffing levels.

One venue recently had 150 patrons and not a single security guard. Noting the obvious recipe for disaster, Acting Sergeant Eiffert reveals he was forced to threaten the operators with temporary closure unless that situation was rectified.

Another group the team works closely with is the CBR NightCrew, whose Mort Street tent we visit when we arrive back in Civic.

Police and paramedics regularly refer revellers to the crew's roving members and to the tent, which volunteer AJ Chapman describes as "a non-judgemental, safe space" for anyone feeling vulnerable on a night out.

Fellow volunteer Daniel Qin reckons 14 or 15 people will be in need of the crew's help on a busy night, but many more will drop by the tent for free water and lollipops.

It wouldn't be a Saturday night on the beat for members of the territory targeting team - known within the police force as "Beats" or the "triple-T" - without a bit of a run, and that's exactly what needs to be done the next time we head up Lonsdale Street.

Trouble is brewing as we spot some young men looking like they're about to come to blows and disappearing down an alleyway opposite Hopscotch.

Another crew has seen the same thing and hurries into the darkness after them on foot as Constable Breakey pulls our car into the laneway's entrance.

He and Acting Sergeant Eiffert are out in a flash and, with the potential tussle over before it even began, the two aggressors among the group are issued with an exclusion direction that bans them from being in the city for the rest of the night.

The team's varied work is quickly on display again as we get back into the car and, fresh from a short burst of action, field a cheeky enquiry from a few young women on foot.

"Are you Uber?" one of them asks Acting Sergeant Eiffert, who doesn't waste the opportunity to crack a joke and build some positive rapport with the revellers.

"Are you going to the watch house?" he asks, to laughter.

That's where we eventually end up, but not before we check on the welfare of a woman who has fallen off an e-scooter and found herself flat on her back in Genge Street.

It's a reasonably tame Saturday night by Canberra's usual standards, we learn as we visit the watch house and find just seven people occupying the 38 cells at City Police Station.

Some will stay behind bars until the next court sittings on Monday morning, having been charged with offences that are either too serious for police to grant bail or because the custody sergeant has decided they should be denied freedom until they see a magistrate.

It's about 3am by the time we return to the streets to join some of Canberra's craziest citizens, many of whom are dressed as if it's summer despite the freezing temperatures.

Outside Mooseheads, the Canberra nightlife institution, we bump into a young man with a propensity for trouble police know all too well.

But, in a demonstration that policing is not all about arrests, Acting Sergeant Eiffert engages in some friendly banter that attracts the reveller's approval and hopefully means he will be less likely to antagonise officers in high-risk situations going forward.

It's not long after this that we hear some illegal fireworks going off in a nearby car park, where some associated smoke is helpfully giving away the whereabouts of those responsible.

The group of people involved is initially reluctant to admit responsibility, but one of them quickly changes his tune when Acting Sergeant Eiffert looks through the window of his ute and spots some fireworks sitting inside.

After the man, of average male height, spins a story about buying the illegal items from a someone twice as tall as him, Acting Sergeant Eiffert explains that he will likely leave it until the man sobers up the next day to phone him and issue a caution.

There's no need to decide what to do about his supposed supplier because we never encounter an 11-foot firework salesman wandering the streets, but there is more to be seen before the shift ends.

While it's now after 3.30am and most people are tucked up at home in bed, we do another lap of the CBD and spot a group of youngsters blowing into balloons by Bailey's Corner.

Such a sight would mean little to an untrained eye, but those at the sharp end of policing know they've filled them with dangerous nitrous oxide gas from small "nangs" canisters.

While doctors have warned of serious risks, including paralysis, associated with their use, they are not illegal and police can do little but watch and conduct welfare checks.

The "nangs" this group is using are sold at a nearby corner store, outside which discarded balloons and cracked canisters line the pavement and fill the corner of a garden bed.

One of the final orders of business before we leave the officers to attend to their paperwork relates to a concern for the welfare of a young woman, who is so intoxicated it is unclear if she wants to hop into a car with a man who is encouraging her to do that.

She instead goes for a ride with one of the other territory targeting team crews to the Sobering Up Shelter in Campbell, where she can sleep it off in a safe environment.

The last job we observe before the end of our seven-hour stint involves the sort of policing with which the public is more familiar.

We're driving past Fiction nightclub a little after 4.30am when word comes through that a man on bail is suspected to be out and about in contravention of his conditions.

Sure enough, his sizeable frame is there and a large police contingent arrives to arrest him without incident.

With the rising of the sun not far away as we leave Acting Sergeant Eiffert and Constable Breakey about 5am, it's clear the regular presence of the pair and their fluoro-clad colleagues around town provides those who spot them and wave a sense of safety.

On the flip side, the sight of them makes would-be criminals aware of the swift consequences that await their potential impropriety.

The young man we encountered outside Mooseheads is a prime example.

While his fists might sometimes be flying in the early hours of a Sunday morning, on this occasion they're amicably bumping against those of Acting Sergeant Eiffert and Constable Breakey.

"Honestly, I hate cops," the man tells them. "But youse guys are alright, eh. Cops are tops!"

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