Disturbing Downtown

Joe Dimeck
Mar.22.2010

In a college town like Burlington, where drinking is as common as Vermont cheddar, it would be easy to assume fights at the downtown bars happen quite regularly.

But as downtown lieutenant, Art Cyr, puts it, “It’s not so much that we see a lot of assaults, but we have a lot of disturbances. On a weekday night, we may not have any. The bulk of our disturbances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, more so Friday and Saturday.”

A disturbance usually involves some angry drunk person, who has been removed from an establishment. Rather than cut their losses, move on, and go home or to some other bar, they decide to make a scene. Yell at the bouncers, try to sneak back in, or refuse to go anywhere. These kind of disputes are common and it typically takes a cop to come along to get the person on their way. Sometimes, they make matters worse and end up taking a ride to the police station.

Another regular cause for either a fight or a disturbance is what Lt. Cyr calls the “Beer Bump”.

“It could be two people, who were drinking, that if they were sober and bumped into each other it’d probably be, ‘Hey, sorry about that man.’ But now because they’re drunk it turns into a fight.”

However, a fight doesn’t technically have to be two guys punching each other.

“When I say a fight, a pushing match, that’s a fight, but it doesn’t rise to the level of an assault charge,” says Lt. Cyr. “One of two things can happen: depending on the severity of what’s going on you could be arrested for disorderly conduct or you could be issued a ticket for disorderly conduct.”

From January 2010 to March 2010, Burlington’s downtown has had 114 disturbances. More times than not, the people involved are college-aged, not necessarily college students, but people between the ages of 21 and 26. While numbers for the assaults could not be provided, Cyr mentions that some of the instances of assault have been quite severe.

“There’s been numerous fights where there’s many people involved, but we’ve also had stabbings downtown related to late night parties and stuff going on downtown.”
Out of the average 5-6 disturbances that the Burlington police deal with on a weekend night, most are typically two people getting into some kind of disagreement while intoxicated. At least, that’s how Lt. Cyr sees it, and he’s spent much of his 15 year long career downtown.

“If there’s a fight, there’s usually an underlying issue, and it’s either one of three things. This is not a guarantee, there are times when other circumstances can cause a fight, but it’s alcohol related, drug related, or significant other related.”
And while most would assume many of the fights involve primarily men, Lt. Cyr notes that the ladies get into their fair share of brouhahas.

“There’s just as many female fights as there are male fights.”
Nevertheless, the key to resolving many of the problems so no one gets hurt or unfairly arrested seems to come down to quick response times. There’s a reason for a heavy police presence downtown, especially on weekends. The sooner they can get to and stop a dispute, the more likely it is the problem hasn’t gotten out of hand.

“Sometimes we’re right there in the very beginning. Sometimes it already ended. Sometimes in progress when we get there,” says Cyr. “You have to do an investigation. It’s not like a week long investigation. You do the best you can on the scene at the time.”

Even then, there’s always a chance that the sight of cops won’t get the people involved to calm down.

“You have to take into consideration a couple things,” says Cyr. “One, are tempers still flying? If tempers are still flying we’ll take both people, and may have to take you into protective custody and get you out of there. But if tempers have calmed down, and the crowd’s not going nuts, we can do it right there. We’ll talk to both people, and then there’s witnesses. Then you have door bouncers, who aren’t drinking, and they can give you a witness statement in regards to what happened.”
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to fight to defend yourself, don’t be afraid to do what you need to do in order to disable the attacker. But if you do successfully fend off some ill-tempered brute, rendering them unable to continue, make sure you stop.

“If you’re fighting and you’re defending yourself that’s not a crime. It’s not illegal to defend yourself,” says Cyr. “Now, you have to be careful. If you keep hitting the person after they’ve stopped or are unable to keep fighting you then become a combative assaulting person.”

And that is one surefire way to make a bad night awful. After all, having to defend yourself against someone too drunk to reason is one thing. However, being taken to jail and charged with a crime just because you threw in a few more shots after knocking someone out is a rotten way to end a night.

Fortunately, the State of Vermont and the Burlington Police Department offer training and advice to all bars in regards to diffusing or quickly reporting a disturbance.

“It deals with protocol for the staff, how to deal with fights, your responsibility as a bar owner or a staff member, signs of intoxication, what to look for when people haven’t got to the stage of fighting yet but are working up to it,” says Cyr.

“Other stuff is having enough staff on duty, and having them clearly marked so people know who they are and what they’re doing so that people know who they can turn to if there’s an incident.”

While the training might not prevent disturbances, it makes it easier to get them under control quickly. Lt. Cyr believes reducing the number of disturbances comes down to education and getting people to be responsible in regards to the decisions they make. In particular, he believes teaching people to stop binge drinking is vital to preventing the kind of assaults and disturbances he deals with throughout the week.

“When you’re 21 years old, you’re not a 14 year old kid anymore, you’re a young lady or a young man, and you’re on your own and you have to take responsibility for your own actions,” says Cyr. “Before you even get downtown, take responsibility, and realize binge drinking is not the thing.”