Taser Used: Violence May Fuel Debate on St. Charles Bar Hours
St. Charles police responded to three fights and a man passed out in a downtown parking lot over the holiday weekend before the City Council tabled action on a proposal to require bars to close at 1 a.m.
St. Charles police used a Taser to subdue an intoxicated man who, according to officers, had accosted two individuals and then displayed his fist and approached an officer in a fighting stance when the officer told him to calm down on Friday night.
It was once of three instances of violence and another of public drunkenness police responded to in the four days leading up to Tuesday’s St. Charles City Council meeting, where a Naperville attorney representing 11 bars and restaurants asked city officials to delay a proposal to cut back their hours from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m.
The proposal was made last month by Mayor Donald DeWitte in response to a spike in the number of fights in one weekend early in the month. DeWitte at that time said police said the individuals involved in the fights were highly intoxicated, which indicated some local bars and restaurants were over-serving customers who already were intoxicated.
Expressing frustration at the spike in spite of a meeting with local liquor license holders in May to discuss the same issues, DeWitte said he believed it was time to cut back the closing time for St. Charles liquor license holders in an effort to curb the violence and ensure the city streets remain safe. He also expressed concern for St. Charles police; one officer was assaulted while responding to one of the fights during the weekend spoke in early August.
The proposal was met Tuesday night with a full house in the City Council Chambers as bar and restaurant owners turned out to listen to attorney Russ Whitaker plead with the council to delay cutting back bar hours and to open a dialogue to resolve the fighting and over-serving issues.
The council tabled the matter until Sept. 24, and talks were to be scheduled between Whitaker and City Administrator Brian Townsend, Police Chief Jim Lamkin and Mayor DeWitte, who also serves as the city's liquor commissioner.
The spike in street fighting over the Labor Day weekend likely will be mentioned in those talks.
Officer Wields Taser
The incident involving the Taser occurred Friday night and ended when John David Thompson, 24, of the 1600 block of Indiana Street, was taken to the Kane County Jail on two felony counts of aggravated battery.
Police were called to the 1400 block of Indiana Street at 11:06 p.m. to find Thompson struggling with two St. Charles residents amid a crowd of people that included another adult male, a woman and children.
When an officer instructed Thompson to calm down, police said he raised his fist and approached the officer aggressively in a fighting stance, so the officer used a Taser on him.
A woman and a man at the scene told police Thompson aggressively confronted them individually. The woman told officers Thompson pushed her during a confrontation he started as she was getting out of her car with her children. The woman took her children into her home, which is when the other victim told police that Thompson then turned on him.
Police said the men they first encountered struggling with Thompson identified themselves as his friends and said they were trying to calm him down and get him out of the area after he had become belligerent with the woman and then the man.
Later, while booking him at the St. Charles Police Department, police said it was obvious that Thompson was highly intoxicated. He was transported to the Kane County Jail pending a court appearance.
Then on Saturday, police were called at 9:32 p.m. to a fight in front of McNally’s Irish Pub, 109 W. Main St. William J. Fenton, 32, of the 1000 block of Millview Drive, Batavia, and William E. Landrum, 35, of the 1900 block of Chase Lane, Aurora, were cited with under a city ordinance that prohibits fighting. Both men also were informed that they no longer are welcome at McNally’s.
An incident early Sunday morning involved no violence but may be relevant to the city’s concerns about over-serving alcohol. Police found Joseph J. Deutsch, 25, of the 2000 block of Best Place, Aurora, unconscious in a parking lot at 2. E. Main St. at 2:09 a.m. He was cited with disorderly conduct/public drunkenness at 2:09 a.m. He was fined $50 and released to his parents.
The final incident occurred at 1:53 am. Monday when police were called to a report of a fight in which a Montgomery man and two Aurora men said they were victims of an assault by a group of men who chased them to the 400 block of West Main Street. When police arrived, their alleged assailants were gone, but witnesses said the victims had provoked the confrontation. Police said all three victims were intoxicated and could not provide descriptions of their assailants. One victim was transported to Delnor Hospital where he received several stitches.
Henry James
5:53 pm on Thursday, September 6, 2012
Does anyone see a pattern here? Again we are talking about the college town image. We have so many bars downtown that it is a draw for the mid 20's folks to come here to pub crawl and obviously many are from out of town. I want downtown to succeed I really do, but bars are not the answer. These aren't the type of people we want to attract to downtown. It is giving us a bad rap and hurting the chances for the City to draw other types of businesses. This is definitely not the place to bring your family anymore.
Ralf
6:13 pm on Thursday, September 6, 2012
n hour doesnt make a difference... who needs to be out at 1:00 in the morning drinking??? i propose 12:00 AM at most.
Sara Turner
7:47 pm on Thursday, September 6, 2012
Look at the ages people... one man was 32, the other 24. Also, look at the locations. Most of the bars are on the west side of town. Not all but most. The time for the one was around 9:30... so it is not necessarily an after 1 issue. It is an over serving issue. If it changes to 1 am a lot of these bars will close down. Leaving MORE EMPTY buildings. There are multiple empty buildings/businesses on main street... so the bars are not keeping the businesses away. The ECONOMY is keeping the businesses away along with the taxes to be in st. charles- which the city will lose at least a million dollars if not more per year if they close the bars early thus causing some bars to close down and go out of business . People will go to Geneva, Batavia, and Naperville for music, food and beverages.
Sara Turner
7:47 pm on Thursday, September 6, 2012
People will be out of jobs and there will be more empty buildings.. this will not make businesses or people want to come to St. Charles. i say let them stay open til 2 am. The city should require all bars to have security, trained with their bassett certificates, fine bartenders, bars , servers and security when people are over served and make the people serving the drinks more accountable. It is hard to judge when a person is drunk if they never get off the bar stool..... I might be able to have 3 drinks and be drunk and another person might be 6 or even more. there are a lot of factors no one way to know but educating everyone that deals with alcohol is a start... along with having security make sure that no one comes into another bar for a bar crawl or whatever already intoxicated. Bartenders and servers better trained to see when people are becoming intoxicated, and making sure it does not happen. Closing at 1 is not going to make a difference with fights... it might make a huge difference with the number of people out of work, and the number of businesses going out of business along with the number of empty buildings on the rise in st. charles....
Just my thoughts. I do not want the fights or drunks on the road either... I think there has to be a way to solve this without making businesses close earlier.
John Ceinski
8:41 pm on Thursday, September 6, 2012
We need our downtown back please
David Amundson
1:07 am on Friday, September 7, 2012
Sara -
This is a relatively minor point here, but the $1M in alcohol taxes figure that gets tossed around all the time; does anybody KNOW where that figure came from? Is that all the alcohol taxes collected from all sources in town (bars, restaurants, package sellers like Binny's, Osco, Lundeen's, etc., and festival/fair sales), alcohol taxes from just the bars in town, or alcohol taxes from just the downtown bars?
My understanding is that the City collects a 2% tax on all alcohol sold in town. Thus, $1M in collected taxes has to be generated off $50M in sales of alcohol. If this figure is being generated by only the downtown bars (I'll count that set as being the Filling Station, Dawn's Beach Bar, the Alibi, Pub 222, Beehive, McNally's, Wild Monk, The Office, the House Pub, River Rockhouse, and the Thirsty Fox), that would have each of them doing over $4M in sales of alcohol only, which seems to be impossibly high to me. Can anybody speak to this issue using facts and not just speculation? Has anybody requested this info. from the City via a FoIA?
Ted Schnell
1:49 pm on Saturday, September 8, 2012
I asked City Administrator Brian Townsend about this, David. He said the city budgeted a little less than $1 million (actually, $963,000) in revenue from the alcohol beverage tax citywide.
Further, Townsend said that only about a third of those revenues come from restaurants and bars. The rest comes from things like grocery and liquor stores, hotels, etc. Townsend also said the city has no way to determine what percentage of the revenue from this tax is generated between 1 and 2 a.m.
Doing the math, that means only about $321,000 is generated by bars and restaurants. To simplify for illustration purposes only, if a bar or restaurant is open 10 hours a day, cutting bar hours to 1 a.m. would be a 10 percent cut in hours. Granted, from the revenue side it’s not that simple, since that would ebb and flow with customer traffic throughout the evening.
I think it more likely that if the city cuts bar hours back to 1 a.m., the city's revenue loss is going to be more in the neighborhood of $30,000, maybe $40,000 (these are guesstimates). From that perspective, that seems more in line with some of the comments made by Mayor DeWitte, who expressed concern for police officer safety and the cost of treating an officer injured by a drunken brawler.
I would point out that my estimates are based on simple math and intended only to illustrate there is a vast difference between the budget impact reality and the all-or-nothing kinds of statements some have tossed around.
Andrea Ahlsen
9:32 am on Sunday, September 9, 2012
Ever since I was a child, the downtown area has had businesses come and go. After I had my "party" days, a slew of bars opened up downtown and St. Charles became known as a bar town. I admit I was a bit jealous because unless you were in sports and kicking a ball around, there was nothing to do but drive out of town for some culture. We'd go to Chicago. Reality: people go to bars for mostly one reason, to drink. Yes, the music could be okay and yes one could enjoy dancing yet get serious. It is for drinking. So, if the town continues to support bars which seems to be the only thing that has ever been popular in downtown it will have to learn to manage the issues. I am not saying that fighting and drinking/driving are correct....far from. Keep the boozers off the road. A long-term, strategic plan that meets the needs of all citizens with a blend is required to make the downtown work. A restaurant here and there won't do it......it needs a unique theme that draws in people of all ages and interests and balances a great imbalance...the drinking.
Rick Umbaugh
1:05 pm on Sunday, September 9, 2012
You can get just as drunk at 10 pm as you can at 1am. This is a silly idea which will be a hardship on the people working at the bars as it will limit their income. It is time to stop looking on St. Charles like it is Mayberry.
Andrea Ahlsen
4:14 pm on Sunday, September 9, 2012
Very true. One can drink at any time. If the bars were to go, there needs to be a quality replacement that people like and enjoy. The downtown, again, for many years has not been appealing. Few businesses have longevity and there is no theme except for the bars. Some business is better than none.