An apparently drink-crazed man had to be pinned to the floor by Police officers after an incident outside the gates of the new Berkeley Institute last week.

Eyewitnesses reported that the black male ? who was bleeding profusely from his right hand ? had been trying to get knocked down by a car.

"He was walking in the centre of the road, striking cars with his helmet. I saw him run down the road shouting that nobody would knock him down or do something to him," said one man at the scene of the incident, which unfolded around 7.20 p.m. on Friday.

"Someone must have called the Police. He was trying to attack the Police and they were trying to restrain him. I think he had been trying to get knocked down by someone so he could fight them."

By 7.30 p.m. the road was closed off by Police, who had the bare-chested man handcuffed, and held down on the ground in the middle of the road.

He could be heard shouting obscenities, and at one point engaged in heated verbal exchanges with at least two men and one woman at the scene.

The Police managed to get him into one of three Police cars at the scene at one point, but he then jumped out to argue with a man nearby and spit in the direction of a female Police officer.

He later collapsed to the pavement and was held there once again, being tended to by Police, until an ambulance arrived. Paramedics bound the man's hands together with a large bandage.

He appeared to be calmer ? and possibly unconscious ? by the time he was put onto a stretcher and taken away for treatment.

A Fire Department team covered a large pool of blood in the road with sand, and the scene was open once again by 7.45 p.m.

A crowd of around 30 people from the local area gathered to watch the drama. A Police officer at the scene and several witnesses said the man had appeared to be drunk.