An official in North Dakota is hoping to force bar owners into installing surveillance cameras that monitor drinkers and record evidence police can use to crack down on bar fights.
Oliver County State’s Attorney Mike Liffrig asked the city of Center, N.D., to require the cameras after a bar brawl earlier this month left a man with severe facial injuries. Liffrig told the Associated Press that the surveillance footage would help prove wrongdoing in the rural town where bar fights are so common it makes Center seem like the Wild West.
Bar owners and local patrons, however, don’t like the idea of police keeping a recorded eye on what is done and said after a few beers.
Perry Wolf, owner of Lonewolf Saloon told the AP, “I don’t have a problem with the video camera, but I won’t put audio in here. That’s baloney.”
Wolf explained, “There are a lot of people who come to bars to talk about other people. I like to drink my beer, too, and my mouth might get a little loose.”
Dean Windhorst claims to have been beaten up twice in Center bar brawls, sporting a pair of black eyes and a busted lip for weeks after the last fight. Still, Windhorst opposes the cameras.
“It’s an invasion of privacy,” he said.
Center is a town of 700 about 40 miles northwest of Bismarck in a county ranked by the North Dakota Job Service as having the highest average annual wage among the state’s 53 counties since 1993.
Center’s City Attorney John Mahoney told the AP that Center is a quiet, friendly town and the city is determined to keep it that way.
“This is a good place to raise a family and we’re trying to draw people here,” Mahoney said. “This fighting gives us a black eye and we don’t need it – the city is very serious about getting a handle on this.”
Without the cameras, however, Mahoney feels there’s little authorities can do about the bar brawls that often break out, he says, between union and nonunion workers building power plants and wind farm projects in the county.
“One of the problems is that fights don’t get reported,” said Mahoney, “or they don’t get reported until several days later, and by then the evidence is stale and the trail is cool.”
Local bar owners, however, say they’d rather handle the problem themselves than subject their law-abiding customers to police surveillance.
“A lot of this has been cleaned up pretty good already,” Wolf told the AP. “I’ve owned this bar six years and I’ve only had to call 911 three or four times.”
Susan Cahoon, owner of Cahoon’s Bar & Grill, agreed that her customers wouldn’t like the idea of police watching their every drink. She said her business has a security camera to guard against burglary, but the problem of bar fights can be handled by banishing the rowdies from the bar.
Wolf explained, “There are a couple of local construction workers who are laid off and like to pick fights. They’re a couple of troublemakers who get drunk and get stupid. They were the source of a lot of the problems. Now they have to move on somewhere else.”
WND reported previously on an attempt by authorities in Virginia to crack down on intoxicated citizens and drunk drivers by more direct means. Rather than using surveillance cameras, police entered bars directly and subjected patrons to sobriety tests.
“[Officers] were talking to one of the guests, then physically pulled him off the barstool,” Richie Prisco, general manager at Champps bar in Fairfax County told the Reston Times. “They were really aggressive and nasty.”
According to the report, police hauled customers outside of establishments to conduct sobriety tests, then arrested them for public drunkenness should they fail.
In response to complaints the raids were overly aggressive, police spokeswoman Grinnan said, “I’ve had bar owners come up to me [and] ask what is going on, but I’ve also had some approach me aggressively, telling me I couldn’t be there and I was violating their constitutional rights.”
Grinnan told the Times, “I’ve been an officer for over 17 years, and we’ve been doing it on and off over my entire career. As much as officers hate to spoil a good time, they hate even more to go out at 2 a.m. and work a death of anybody that is alcohol-related.”
