Police block weekend traffic on Crown Street

If you're one of the hundreds of people flooding onto Crown Street when the bars close at around 1:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, don't count on catching a cab.

According to New Haven Police Captain Joe Polio, the police routinely shut down the busy street between College and Temple Streets on weekend nights, preventing all cars and taxi cabs from entering. "If the midnight supervisor sees that there's a sellout crowd, he'll make a call in and get officers to stand on the corners," Polio explained. "The street is usually closed about half an hour, just until we're satisfied that enough people have left."

Cab drivers such as Metro Taxi employee John O'Reilly, however, resent being faced with a situation where they're barred access to the people coming out of the bars. "It says on my business card that I provide transportation for drinking drivers, but how can I do this when the police won't let me near to the bars?" O'Reilly asked.

Polio responded that street closings are "a safety issue." He explained that it is within the police's jurisdiction to regulate public safety. "You have to look at the greater good," Polio said. "The cabs might be projecting that they can't get to certain people, but we're looking at a real situation. There is a sea of people on the street, running and crossing without looking."

"We're just looking to clear out the crowds and make sure that no one gets run over," New Haven Police Captain Brian Kearney explained. "We don't want anyone to get run over, and we don't want a situation where a car gets too close to a person and that person punches out its window. Also, we want to disperse people as quickly as possible in order to avoid any fights."

O'Reilly maintains that police can control the situation and let cars through at the same time. "If the police feel like they need to prevent fights, why don't they just patrol the area in numbers?" he asked. "Why can't they just make their presence known without completely blocking the access?"

Scott Stone, manager of Gecko's nightclub, estimates that there are between 1,000 and 1,500 people on Crown Street when bars let out. Stone described the typical post-bar scene as "a situation where there are lots of groups congregated outside, often right in the middle of the street. People will be smoking or exchanging phone numbers." He added, "And then, of course, every now and then, a big fight will break out, and the police will get involved."

"What we want to do is get all of these people standing on the street dispersed as quickly as possible," Polio stated. "When you put alcohol together with people from different groups on a street corner, you're looking for trouble. And we want to prevent it."

Still, O'Reilly believed that the police were creating other safety hazards such as drinking and driving by redirecting traffic. "Do the police care about what happens to these drunk people?" O'Reilly asked. "Because it seems like they want them out of the street, but don't care if they make it home safely or not."

Polio explained that an additional reason for shutting down the street is to prevent a phenomenon known as trawling. "What happens is cars full of young people who don't go to the bars show up after the bars close and drive around and around the block and keep trying to scoop up some of the young ladies coming out. We want to prevent this from happening," Polio said.

Students appeared to be unaware of the street closures. "I know that there are always tons of people coming out of those bars, but I don't know much about what the police do to control the situation," Cory Gaffney, BK '99, said. "I never really see any cars near the bars at that time, but I never realized that the police were literally blocking the street," Merrill Dobson, TD '00, added.

Photo by Patrick McGarvey.

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