Vic Moomba festival marred by youth brawl

Gangs of youths are using social media to plan street fights in Melbourne's CBD most weekends, and the three-day Moomba Festival was no different.

But overall Victoria Police are happy with the behaviour of visitors to the city for the long weekend, despite the arrest of 20 people for assault, drunken behaviour, drugs and weapons offences.

Three brawls between warring gangs of youths at Federation Square and Flinders Street Station between 10pm on Saturday night and 2am the next day resulted in two of the arrests.

Commander Tim Hansen described the incident as a "rolling brawl" and while it occurred during the Moomba weekend it wasn't directly linked to the festival, as clashes involving groups from Melbourne's southeast and western suburbs attracted police attention most weekends.

"They are networked on social media, some of them assume banners and tags of street gangs and there are existing tensions between them," Mr Hansen added.

"We've been very successful in disrupting planned fights in the past, but on Saturday night there was nothing significant (in the intelligence) that indicated we would see a fight."

During the weekend, police proactively removed certain youths from the Moomba precinct and took others off the street before the weekend kicked off.

Of the 20 people arrested between Friday and Monday morning, 10 were arrested in the Moomba Precinct for drugs, weapons and assault offences.

Provisionally, the numbers indicate a fall in crimes against the person and criminal offences during the three-day festival, Mr Hansen said, although he didn't give comparable figures.

"Our extra police presence across the CBD assisted us greatly, and helped incidents be dealt with very quickly."