To establish a dedicated police presence for downtown’s rowdy clubbing district, Police Chief James Lewis suggested creating a new “entertainment tax.”
Lewis (pictured) pitched the idea at a meeting of downtown’s new Night Life Safety Task Force, which met for the first time Thursday afternoon at the Omni Hotel. The meeting was convened by the Town Green Special Services District in effort to create harmony between residents and business owners near Crown Street, where rising numbers of partiers pack downtown’s bars and clubs.
The problems brought up by those attending the meeting ranged from noise and pools of vomit on sidewalks to vandalism and street crime.
Lewis said the businesses that sent representatives to the meeting were already generally doing their part to deal with the thousands of people who crowd the city’s entertainment district on weekends. It is the few who don’t, he said, that worry him.
About 20 privately-hired officers are stationed downtown on a typical weekend night, Lewis said. The most serious public safety problems often occur at the businesses that do not hire police protection, he argued. Those clubs drain police resources by diverting police to the area from elsewhere in the city.
Without additional funding, Lewis said, it is often difficult for the department to guarantee the availability of officers in the entertainment district when the same officers responsible for patrols may be called away at any time to respond to more serious crimes elsewhere.
“I think at some point there has to be serious discussion about whether there should be an entertainment tax of some kind,” Lewis said. The tax would be levied on downtown clubs in order to pay for a team of police officers dedicated to patrolling the area.
The tax would spread out the responsibility of public safety, Lewis said: “I think frankly the ones of you that are paying your fair share are not going to pay more, and the ones that are not paying their fair share will be forced to step up to the plate and take care of some of these issues.”
And although many bar and club owners hire off-duty police officers to provide extra security, Lewis said that practice came with its own set of problems.
“We don’t allow them to go inside your businesses, so what they’re doing potentially is standing outside a business that’s got juveniles in there drinking.”
“I’d rather have those 20 [extra-duty] officers truly under my command,” he said. “Then they’d be able to tackle some of these issues that right now we’re not very effective at cleaning up.”
Rena Masten Leddy (pictured), the new head of the Town Green Special Services District, said she has worked on similar issues in six other cities over a 17-year career. She agreed that a more reliable and flexible police presence in the area was needed. However, she stopped short of endorsing a new tax to fund such a program.
“In the cities that I’ve worked in, one of the solutions has been getting this dedicated group of police officers that works in the entertainment district,” she said, “and in every city they’re funded in different ways: sometimes it’s a tax, sometimes it’s a pool of money that everybody just volunteers, and sometimes it’s a tax on something else.”
Leddy said that other cities, like Providence, RI, have had notable public safety successes with even larger crowds. She urged those in the room to dedicate themselves to making the task force a success by holding regular meetings to share strategies and find common ground.
“There’s 5,000 people down here on a Friday night,” she said, “and we need to get them safely out of here without impacting businesses. Ultimately, I don’t really want the city, or the residential population or me to tell you how to do that; I want you to tell me how to do that.”