ASCOT racegoers have been warned they will be hit in the pocket if they misbehave on the city's streets.

Chief Superintendent Tim Madgwick said officers were ready to hand out £80 on-the-spot fines to troublemakers.

It was the first time the fixed penalty tickets were being handed out as part of a "pre-emptive" policy to crack down on drunks before violence erupts.

Chief Superintendent Madgwick said he was determined to cut down incidents of violence in the city centre.

His comments came before today's "Ladies Day", which police expect to be one of the busiest of the five-day festival.

Teams of officers were on stand-by to deal with any flashpoints, as thousands of racegoers were expected to head into the city centre for the evening.

Chief Supt Madgwick said a fixed penalty fine, effectively a "yellow card", would be a deterrent to would-be attackers.

"There is a level of violence that is unacceptable," he said. "We want to step back from that. We want it to fall.

"It is stretching us to have to deal with it. We can deal with it through our criminal justice partners so anyone caught on suspicion of an unprovoked assault in the city is going to end up in court regardless of the circumstances.

"We can use pre-emptive fixed penalty tickets to get in early around drunkenness. Fixed penalty tickets can be a deterrent. In the past, we might have given out advice, but people won't forget a fixed penalty ticket."

Last month, the Evening Press reported how five people were attacked on the streets of York every day.

Updated: 10:22 Thursday, June 16, 2005