Next Tuesday, Mayor Mike McGinn will fulfill his campaign promise to foster local nightlife while keeping problem bars and patrons in check by introducing his eight-point Seattle Nightlife Initiative. The initiative includes mechanisms to ticket obnoxious people on the street, stagger closing times for bars, handle residential complaints about club noise more fairly, and more. It already has the backing of the Seattle Police Department and nightlife activists who say that the measures are long overdue.
“It targets actual bad behavior instead of just giving police the broad power to target clubs or abuse people who aren’t doing anything wrong,” says Dave Meinert, a nightlife advocate and owner of the 5-Point downtown, who’s seen a draft of the mayor’s proposal.
Of the nightlife initiative’s eight points, a so-called meat-head ordinance is getting both bar owners and residents excited. The ordinance, which is currently sponsored by city council member Nick Licata, would allow police to issue tickets for some public nuisance behaviors—such as fighting and drunk and disorderly conduct—between the hours of midnight and 5:00 a.m. in targeted nightlife areas. “Currently, we have limited means for dealing with these people,” says SPD spokeswoman Det. Reneé Witt. “If they create enough of a disturbance, say if they’re fighting, we can take them off the street.” Obviously, the benefit of such an ordinance is that there’s an immediate penalty for wasted yahoos, it might dissuade these people from being drunk, public messes in the future, and it keeps officers on the streets instead of having to process and book them.
“This targets actual bad behavior as opposed to giving police broad power to abuse people not doing anything,” says Meinert. “We want healthy late-night activity. What no one wants is shitheads ruining it for everyone.”
And the proposed ordinance is specific enough that it won’t infringe on individual freedoms, says ACLU Deputy Director Jennifer Shaw. “Given the problem of people coming out of the bars at 2:00 a.m. and causing a ruckus, this gives a reasonable time frame for addressing the problem, it limits the areas it can be used, and it gives the alternative of citations instead of making behavior a crime.”
Another aspect of the initiative that has bar owners’ stamp of approval involves how SPD handles noise violations. There’s already a 2007 city ordinance on the books that sets nighttime noise limits at 80 dBC (which measures bass). What the initiative proposes is making the ordinance complaint-based, meaning SPD couldn’t investigate an establishment for noise violations without a resident first calling the police. Once a resident complained, police would go to the complainant’s home, shut all the doors and windows, and measure the noise levels to see if the business was in violation.
“It takes out the possibility of police targeting specific businesses,” says Meinert. “An officer needs to get a complaint and then get evidence that a club is too loud before it results in enforcement. It’s subjective. It’s fair.”
Other aspects of the initiative address extending liquor service hours (the effects of which still need to be studied, says Washington State Liquor Control Board spokesman Brian Smith), beefing up club security training, improving late-night transportation options, creating guidelines for nightclub good business practices, deploying a compliance team to work with nightlife businesses and other agencies, and arranging meetings between residences and nightlife businesses to encourage productive communication.
“This initiative takes a comprehensive look at resolving chronic nightlife problems in Seattle instead of just reacting to the issue of the day,” says James Keblas, director of the Seattle Office of Film and Music, who has worked on the initiative. “It’s smarter, it’s faster, and it covers a lot of ground.”
McGinn will outline all of these ideas and set time lines for implementing them next Tuesday, July 13, at 7:00 p.m. at the Century Ballroom on Capitol Hill.
*This post has been updated.
The ability to ticket jerks… no one is worried about subjective enforcement?
I am worried that ticketing assholes will happen to the people cops want to arrest. How many dude-bro douchebags can you imagine taking a ticket without escalating?
Either way its a give and take with the police. We get things like staggered bar close times and they get to ticket people. I can live with this.
Also the cops might just go around ticketing loud people whooping and shouting outside my apartment and not harass my drunk ass as I quietly stumble home.
Speaking of “obnoxious” after spending an extended weekend in San Franscisco, I wanted to comment on what I consider to be some of the super-aggressiveness of some of Seattle’s sexual community (notice I did not use a prefix).
In San Francisco, there is a formal reserve for all groups. People know who they are, what they can offer and who they can work with.
Here in Seattle, it seems like everyone is fair game for everyone else to hassle, hustle and overall just pester. It’s like people just woke up yesterday and suddenly decided, “oh, I’m a straight-gay-bi-lesbian-tran whatever, and now the whole world is my oyster!”.
While you’re pressing against people on a bus, or following too close on an escalator, perhaps you could stop a second and develop a modicum of reserve. Yes, we know you’re wonderful…just don’t be wonderful on top of me, so often.
@1 Subjective enforcement is a problem with any law but we still have to make illegal the behavior we want to crack down on.
This sounds pretty solid. About time.
I can haz beer on stage?
Or if I’m technically an “employee,” minimum wage?
I meant selective, of course. It’s hot.
@1 nope. Not after one of them tried to break into my house.
That said, the ability to have beer on stage should only be if the entire act (musicians and crew) are all at or above drinking age. That way underage bands can still perform to above age (drinking) crowds.
@2 oh, come on, it’s not like the SPD has a video history of arresting people for Walking While Hispanic or Driving While Black …
oh, wait, did a google search … never mind.
#4: Thats why you only make laws against behavior that will be enforced 100% of the time it’s caught. Shoplifting? Always enforced. Domestic violence? Always enforced. Red light cameras? Always enforced.
If you make laws as “tools” for the police to use when they want to, you get awful results. Marijuana? About 20% of the Seattle population uses it but it’s impoverished minorities who get arrested. Jaywalking? Generally the same thing.
If there is a fine against “disorderly conduct,” who do you think it will be used against – loud black people in front of a hip hop club or loud white people in front of an upscale sports bar?
That’s also why Dave Meinert likes the law (and liked the panhandling law), of course. He’s not a “nightlife advocate,” he’s a “White Seattle” advocate. He has said time and time again that the problem is “crack addicts” and “troublemakers from the suburbs.” I don’t think he’s talking about his Bellevue clientele going to the 5 point.
Looks like a reasonable bunch of proposals. Dan’s point is a good one–I think it’s important to be aware of the potential for selective enforcement (inherent in all criminal laws) and keep good statistics to make sure the power isn’t being abused.
@11 he got the “troublemakers from the suburbs” part right, mind you.
@3, maybe San Franciscans have higher standards.
I don’t understand: shouldn’t the police be able to ticket people for fighting or disorderly conduct 24hrs a day?
So who’s in charge of e-mailing Carr in Texas or wherever the fuck they’re allowing him to live next that there’s a better, smarter way to go about things here?
@11 have you ever BEEN to 1st Avenue at 2:00am?
This sounds promising, but it’s hard for me to get past Meinert constantly being interviewed/quoted on all things music and nightlife. The guy doesn’t give a shit about ANYTHING unless it benefits his businesses’ bottom lines. For me, his association always taints the good work around this and other initiatives, and I find it hard to believe the powers that be can’t see right through him as well. A necessary evil? Perhaps, but it worries me that good deeds like this will someday be ignored/shot down because of his involvement.
This is utterly stupid…will work the same way as government, cps or anything else..if someone doesn’t like it, they just keep complaining, hundreds of complaints from 1 or 1complaint from hundreds??? all the same… bark up another tree!
@11 you obviously have never been to the 5 point.
@1 – Dan, there’s tons of worry about selective enforcement. The Council is requiring a review of how the ordinance is implemented within a year if it going into effect. Hopefully they consider race as part of the review. I think Licata is sensitive to this, and definitely the SNMA is concerned about selective enforcement. We’ll definitely be one of the voices that will come out against this if it does get abused. I’m sure The Stranger will be as well. But overall this suite of proposals should allow for more nightlife, while helping make sure it’s sane nightlife. Hopefully a win win for the whole city.
McGinn, Licata and Pete Holmes should get a lot of props for putting this together. And especially McGinn who shows what good can happen when all sides can work together to come up with solutions, and then the Mayor’s office, Council and the City Attorney work together to write and pass the proposed solutions. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything like this in Seattle. Good work everyone.
Oh great, I have to let cops inside my house if a bar is too loud. That’s not obtrusive.
good. finally when I call the po po’s re: the idiots in and outside of the crescent something will be done.
@22: I’m going to assume that only if you are the snitch, police will enter your home to test sound levels. 80 dBC is loud as shit, like a sustained mini-earthquake of bass frequencies – I’m glad that the law puts the violation threshold so high.
Wasn’t fighting/assaulting someone and drunk and disorderly conduct already illegal? I’m hoping there are really clear guidelines for police on what behavior is determined to be ticketable/arrestable. I totally don’t trust their judgment calls in the field and I, like #1, could see this as just another tool they could use selectively, especially against gay and hip-hop clubs and their patrons. I’m all for the staggered bar times and actually having a bunch of buses do a run around 2am out to the neighborhoods from where bars and clubs are. Will the new laws on sound levels be in effect for the entire city or just designated nightlife areas? And major thumbs up if DJs and bands can sip a beer again in clubs, that rule is ridiculous. Spinning records in the corner shouldn’t be considered the same as working behind the bar in the eyes of the law.
I like the noise level requirements, but given the mini heat wave just had last week, it seems kind of unfair that all doors/windows have to be closed when the noise reading is taken. Maybe there should be a caveat that if the outside temperature is above 70°F then the reading can be taken with the windows open but the threshold is increased to 90 dB or something. I’d also like it if the sound level was below a certain level (say 40 dB) that the whiny asshole who called the cops in the first place got a ticket.
But yeah, just about everything else here is awesome. Staggered times, late buses, drinking on stage…fuck yeah! Ticketing drunk assholes is a great idea in theory, but like others have already pointed out, I’m concerned about who/where that particular rule will be enforced.