The city's problems with what officials call "problem bars" downtown and elsewhere are needlessly excessive and need fixing. The remedies - a stronger set of local ordinances and intensive lobbying for a change in state liquor laws - should be promptly pursued. Indeed, it's hard to understand why the ordinance changes now under consideration by the City Council are not already in place.
The number of incidents requiring police intervention at some bars have become alarming. Police department records show 87 police calls at JJ's Lounge, 2208 Glass St., this year through September. The Raw Bar, 409 Market St., had 55 in the same period. The Fire and Ice Club, 807 Market St., and Midtown Music, 820 Georgia Ave., had 53 and 52, respectively.
Many of the situations requiring police intervention have been serious. This paper's police reporter, Beth Burger, found that of the calls for police from September 2009 through September 2011, police calls at the Midtown Music Hall involved 17 assaults (including four on officers), 17 fights, 13 thefts and eight disorders. In the same period, calls to the 807 Fire and Ice Club involved 20 noise complaints, eight disorders, five fights, three assaults and one robbery. One recent disorder there required 30 officers to quell the violence and disperse crowds.
These are alarming numbers. They demand stricter rules and prompt enforcement for violations. But presently, the city's hands are partly tied. The city' Beer and Wrecker Board can, and has, suspended or permanently lifted permits to sell beer at clubs with such records. But it has no control over sales of wine and liquor, which are regulated by the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission. So when the Fire and Ice Club had its beer permit suspended recently, the state agency continued to allow the club to sale spirits and wine.
Such limitations on the city's control of public safety issues at bars and businesses that spawn such disorder are untenable. The city clearly needs to pursue changes in the law through the Legislature to remedy its lax law enforcement.
Meanwhile, the city should move quickly to adopt the stiffer criteria for beer permits now being considered by the City Council. The criteria include improved security, parking and lighting plans, and mandatory training and adequate staffing of private security personnel to keep order in and around the premises of a club. Tighter building and fire codes for bars would also help.
There is, in fact, no excuse for rules and ordinances that are so weak that they fail to inhibit disorders, or the immediate shutdown of clubs for such infractions. Public safety should be paramount. Disorders in and around raucous clubs threatens their patrons, dampens the business of adjacent nightspots, diminishes public safety, and chills the atmosphere of civility that is necessary to keep the city's nightlife vibrant and appealing to residents and tourists.
If the city wants to keep our nightlife safe and secure, fun and prosperous, clubs that spawn repeated calls for police intervention must be brought under control, or heavily fined and shut down.