Old Port pissing match
Bar owners to sue city; officials consider crackdown
By Chris Busby
Some Old Port bar owners and city officials think they have an obvious solution to the late-night crime problem in the district: make the offenders pay.
“Start fining and arresting the few number of people who are actually causing problems,” wrote Oasis owner Michael Harris in an April 12 letter to The Bollard. “We want people to start hearing that if you start trouble in the street, you’re going to get fined!”
Harris and other bar owners say police are allowing people to fight and urinate on the streets of the Old Port practically at will. Bar owners, police and city officials discussed this at a May 16 meeting of the new Old Port Night Life Task Force.
Mayor Jim Cohen appointed the task force to find solutions to problems associated with large groups gathering in the popular tourist district on late weekend nights.
In an attempt to help cover the cost of heavy police coverage, city councilors more than tripled a bar fee assessed on certain types of bars in the area as part of the city budget passed last week.
Also last week, over a dozen bar owners gathered for beers to discuss challenging that fee hike in court.
Portland attorney Joseph Goodman has been working with the group, but did not return a call seeking comment. A bar owner who attended and helped organize last week’s meeting – speaking on condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the matter – confirmed that the bar owners decided to sue, as they had publicly threatened to do during a council meeting earlier this spring.
The bar group’s spokesperson, Gritty McDuff’s owner Richard Pfeffer, could not be reached for comment. City attorney Gary Wood affirmed his opinion that the fee was legal, and had no further comment.
The bar owners say the fee, commonly called the “seat tax,” is actually a tax, and as such in unlawful. It applies only to bars that make over half their revenue from alcohol sales and which are located within an oddly shaped Old Port Overlay Zone.
At present, there are 22 bars with Overlay Licenses (a maximum of 24 are available), and the fee hike would make them responsible for a total of $60,000. Bar owners like Harris think the city can improve the crowd situation and cover the cost of doing so by holding offenders legally, and financially, accountable.
City Councilor Will Gorham acknowledged that many perpetrators of assault get off scot-free. But he pointed out that for police and prosecutors to prove a crime, they need both the victim and the defendant. “If the victim takes off, there’s not much you can do,” said Gorham, whose council district includes the Old Port.
Gorham also acknowledged that bar patrons are generally allowed to pee freely, but he attributed that to a lack of prosecutorial will.
“The D.A.’s Office said, ‘If you don’t see genitalia, we’re not going to prosecute,'” said Gorham, who added that Police Chief Tim Burton is being asked to “have a conversation” with District Attorney Stephanie Anderson about the matter.
“If you see someone standing against a dumpster and you know he’s taking a wizz, they should be arrested,” said Gorham.
Burton did not return calls seeking comment. Anderson was unavailable for comment.
“I don’t even know if public urination is a crime,” said City Councilor Jim Cloutier. “Public exposure is a crime.”
Jan Beitzer, Executive Director of Portland’s Downtown District, said there is a city ordinance against public urination. And unlike fines for violations of Maine law, which are sent to the state government, the city collects revenue from local ordinance violations.
The local law against pissing (or shitting) on a public street is classified as a crime of “indecent conduct.” The majority of these citations involve public urination, said city spokesperson Peter DeWitt.
Police made 37 arrests for indecent conduct in 2005, and issued 4 citations, according to police records. So far this year, there have been 10 arrests and three citations. First-time violators face a fine of at least $100; second offenders, $300; and third-timers, $500 – plus the cost of the city’s attorney fees and “all costs of prosecution,” according to the ordinance.
But even if the city could crack down on public pissers, Cloutier said he isn’t sure that would help keep the peace.
“There are a lot of amateur crowd control specialists out there,” Cloutier said, adding that he’d like to hear the advice of someone with “expertise in how this actually works and what your practical opportunities are.” He noted that the process of arresting and prosecuting offenders is time consuming and complicated.
“If you have three or four thousand people down there, and it takes easily a half an hour of instant paperwork to put one of these together, and you’ve only got 10 or 12 officers” in the area, “there are probably those who’d make the judgment that the math doesn’t work out.”
