The city’s nightlife advisory board presented its recommendations for new nightlife rules, a year and a half in the making, to the city council’s civil rights committee this morning. The advisory board, created by the city more than three years ago, was supposed to help defuse tensions between the city and bars and clubs. In practice, however, the commission hasn’t done much since its creation; in fact, the group didn’t meet for nearly six months because they couldn’t find a police officer willing to serve on the board—a situation committee chair Nick Licata calls “benign neglect” on the part of Mayor Greg Nickels and former SPD chief Kerlikowske.
Once Kerlikowske was replaced by interim chief John Diaz, however, things started to move forward again, culminating in yesterday’s recommendations.
The most interesting suggestion on the list: Giving the Seattle Police Department more authority to crack down on unruly club patrons who yell, fight, and disrupt the peace outside bars and clubs. Committee chair Nick Licata says the seemingly counterintuitive recommendation actually makes sense: Club owners protested nightlife rules proposed in the past precisely because they put too much responsibility on business owners to police the area outside their property. Meanwhile, line officers have felt they don’t have the authority to enforce rules against disorderly behavior, leading to a situation where everyone is annoyed by nuisance crimes, but no one feels responsible for dealing with them.
“The clubs felt they were being unduly punished for the behavior of people outside their clubs, and of course they do not have the authority, nor should they have the authority, to patrol the area outside their establishments,” Licata says. He says he wants to move forward with the recommendations as quickly as possible, “so we don’t drop the ball.”
