Large Fierce Mammal

“Never go to clubs with metal detectors. Sure it feels safe inside. But what about all those niggas waiting outside with guns? They know you ain’t got one.” ~ Chris Rock

Chris Rock uses the word “nigga” the way I use GU (Great Unwashed). All considerations of race, social status, or job description notwithstanding, an asshole is an asshole, and nobody should put their security against assholes in the hands of another asshole.

When Mrs. LFM was in her last year at Dalhousie University, we rented an apartment for a year that was both within easy walking distance from the campus, and likewise close to all the down town action spots. If I had to define perfection in a city, Halifax would qualify because if you’re not allergic to walking you can get everything you need from it at a transportation cost measured purely in shoe leather.

Not even approaching being city folk, we still have to make the 100 kilometer run from our rural nest into the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) weekly because of business commitments, and sometimes combine that necessity with a date at one of the assorted purveyors of victuals that have attracted our admiration. 100 kilometers is a good distance. It puts an hour’s worth of highway between what the city can give us when we’re in the mood, and what we really need.

We’re not the types to crave the club atmosphere, preferring pubs, but now and then while we still lived in Halifax, after a dinner out we’d stroll further down town and visit one of the bars. In the course of that, there was an incident involving one specific establishment that I’ll relate here as an introduction to the reason I’m bending your ear here today.

The bar in question is, in fact, a complex of interconnected ones, each with its own vibe. The time we’d been there before the day in question, we’d gone in on a whim, and found security to be light and courteous. A few months later we learned that one of our favourite local bands would be playing that same venue, and planned to see them. This time, things had changed.

We refuse to stand for hours in a line for the honour of visiting a watering hole, but arriving at the premises to find a short and fast moving lineup we jumped in. It was when we got within six or so people from the door that I noticed the bouncers were employing a portable metal detector to scan everyone going in. I will permit that sort of thing before boarding an airplane or entering a court room, but as a condition for paying your cover charge and drinking your over priced hooch, and in the full knowledge that your job is to protect the premises and not me, I promise to be of good behaviour, see to my own security, and respectfully suggest that you go fuck yourself.

This doesn’t come from my not wanting it to be discovered that I’m in possession of any prohibited weapon or device. I wasn’t then, nor is it my custom to be so. Simply put, if I am in possession of anything that is legal under the laws of the land, but that is nonetheless offensive to the rules of admission to private property, then I will respect the property owner’s wishes by spending my money elsewhere; most likely in perpetuity.

By the time of this narrative, I had been a security professional for more than 20 years, plying my trade as a part of the solution rather than the problem. As the line got shorter, I observed the demeanor, attentiveness, and overall professionalism of the security staff at the door (more show than go), and considered the presence of the Swiss Army Knife in my left front pants pocket combined with the Spyderco Police Model folding knife clipped inside the opposite one, against the option of simply walking away. Fuck that is what I decided.

My thoughts of hardware quickly veered toward deployment of my wetware – that assemblage of tissue that resides within my skull, does not register on any device intended to detect weapons, but that is my most potent weapon nonetheless. Arriving at the door, I immediately engaged the man with the detection wand, pulled out my innocuous Swiss Army Knife and said, “This will drive your gear crazy. Where can I check it until I leave?”

As expected, he did what I always council people who find an explosive device while searching a building in the wake of a bomb threat not to do – he assumed it was the only one – and pointed me to the coat check about 30 feet away, inside the bar and past the security checkpoint, staffed by a sweet, helpful, busy girl who had no knowledge or interest in what was happening at the door. I thanked him, took the hand of my gorgeous Wife whose cleavage had made the guys at the door forget she should also be scanned with more than just their eyes, and dutifully headed off to the coat check while simultaneously dropping my Swiss Army Knife back where it lived. Result – coats were checked. Knives were not. The security measures were proven to be ineffective giving me all the more reason to consider them untrustworthy in seeing to the safety of me and mine.

Now, I could have simply decided that I didn’t want to be scanned in any way and walked away. There would have been no reason or obligation to explain my reasons to bar staff, even if my refusal came at the very instant that one of them approached me with the metal detector wand. My refusal would have violated no laws, nor would it have stood up in any court as justification of reasonable grounds to assume that I was in the commission of, intended to commit, or was about to commit, an offense justifying a citizen’s arrest or the use of force. You have presented me with a condition of entry that I am unwilling to comply with, therefore I am leaving. Nothing more. Nothing less. And yet, the way things are developing, both in Halifax and in the world at large, walking away can carry its own consequences. Police can be called, suspicions uttered, resulting in innocent people being confronted with police who are acting on the premise that they are at least potentially armed and dangerous. This is not a good place to be for anyone, but made all the worse when it comes from a simple assertion of one’s right to a change of mind.

Similarly, the posting of a sign at a store’s checkout counter proclaiming, “We reserve the right to search all bags,” does not obligate anyone to submit to such a search. They are simply words on a sign, and any attempt to force compliance on a person who is not under reasonable suspicion of committing an offense beyond refusal to submit is itself an illegal act, beginning with assault, and the one assaulted is legally entitled to defend against it with as much force as they deem to be reasonably necessary.

“If you aren’t guilt of anything, why won’t you let me search you?” These are words I hear all too often coming out of encounters with security staff, and they need to be expunged by a combination of training and refusal of employment to people seeking such positions as a means of gaining power over others. To my mind, those who are qualified can never be considered a finished product. Preventing development of a toxic “culture” within the work environment – an us or them mindset –  requires regular requalification, including such elements as scenario based training, the use of force continuum, proper application of physical force, and all impinging legal aspects.

I speak of searches because they are a particularly sore point with me, and use them here as illustration that they are a component of a larger affliction that promises far worse than mere rights violations. The road that’s been built by our over muscled security culture leads to death.

Al Capone said, “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” He may have been a gangster, but that doesn’t lessen the veracity of his words. The one in charge conveys the desired outcome, and the simple and obvious fact that it can be achieved in one of two ways – the easy way, and the hard one. Simple, smart, and it leaves a face saving exit route open to even the dimmest of barflies.

This has begun  to infect all areas of security and law enforcement in the post 9/11 era, to a greater or lesser degree depending on where you live. The implication of violence as a last resort has transformed into handling everything with overwhelming force as a first option. The SWAT approach. In truth, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. Everything becomes about the threat of violence, and doing everything possible to justify turning the threat into reality to teach the rubes a lesson. Failure to comply with instructions in the first millisecond gets you roughed up. Reflexive movements get you pummeled. It’s as though Quentin Tarantino wrote the rules of engagement.

Arising from an incident that occurred back in 2009, the Nova Scotia Government announced that it would be passing legislation requiring training for bar security staff. In light of what Mrs. LFM brought to my attention today, it didn’t take.

Among his other skills, John Wesley Chisholm is a Halifax musician who recently witnessed an example of what happens when the inmates are put in charge of the asylum, and in the wake of it today posted an impassioned plea to sanity by way of his facebook page. I’m repeating it here, in Mr. Chisholm’s own words, in case anyone experiences difficulty with the embedded facebook link.  Give this man your full attention. He’s right. This has to stop; and now.

I’ve written before about the problem with violence downtown. Musicians, working and visiting downtown late, have a unique perspective. Tonight I had an experience that is typical of the deadly violence downtown.

11:30- I say goodnight to Jack and head down to the Carleton to see Adam Baldwin’s great house band, support the scene and meet some friends. A typical Saturday night. I’ve been going out like this in Halifax since Oct. 31, 1980.

And this story is typical too.

I’m writing it because our streets are soaked with blood and people are dying. We have to speak out and we have to cause change.

The bar is crowded so we’re at the back near the door, listening to the band. There’s a 20 something guy beside us. He’s drunk. Nice drunk. Nova Scotia drunk. Loves everyone. Has something funny to say to everyone. He’s there with a half dozen or so guys and girls. He’s slobbering drunk.

Now, there are only two possibilities here: the guy was admitted to the bar drunk or he was served until he was drunk. Either way, the bar, as well established in law, has some responsibilities for what happens to this kid next.

He stands beside another guy at the bar who accuses him of slobbering in his drink. I was standing right there. It didn’t happen. But the other guy maybe wasn’t having such a good night so he was irritated. He tells the bartender, then the bouncer.

Even though this is the nicest neighbourhood bar you can imagine, a listening room for music more than a bar, owned and run by the nicest, kindest folks you’ll ever meet, they have this bouncer. Imagine the caricature. He’s all musclebound. He’s got his head buzzed like Travis Bickle. Neck wider than head. Where everyone else is dressed smart casual, he’s wearing a beat up sweatshirt that’s covered with all sorts of branding about Brazilian Jiu jitsu – a combat sport as I understand it.

Combat. It is as advertised. The bouncer approaches the drunk kid combatively. Pushing. Shoving. Accusing. Escalating an awkward moment into a violent chain of events. Shoving the kid toward the door. The kid is slow to move. He’s drunk. Even just watching I was having a hard job hoisting it all in. It’s hard for me (as a non-drinker) to even imagine how the kid is trying to deal with the violence raining down on him out for nowhere. Just a moment ago he was everyone’s friend. The girls and guys, his friends, are now screaming. Wanting to know what is happening and why. Communication is ZERO. It’s all physical violence and aggression from this bouncer.

In the 5 metres to the door he shoves the kid at least five times as the kid meekly protests: he wants to speak to his friends, finish his drink, get his jacket…make some kind of plan.  Every word meets with violence. When they get outside onto the concrete steps of the bar the bouncer, cursing, gives him a big shove. The kid almost falls to the concrete, but gets his balance – somehow, the lucky grace of a drunken man – and turns around and gives the bouncer a punch on the lip. It’s nothing. But it’s obvious that’s just what the bouncer has been ‘pushing’ for. He starts pounding on the kid. Ten metres down the street from the bar he’s still shaking, punching and pushing the kid. Again the kid, drunk and defenseless, turns and tries in vain to defend himself. He stands wobbly.  The bouncer runs toward him and shoves as hard as he can. The kid falls backward and hits his head on a planter before crumbling to the street.

As an observer, this happens in slow motion for me. In my mind I see so many other Nova Scotian sons, drunk, as is our exuberant culture, who’ve died this way, even on this very street.

But the kid’s OK and struggles to his feet. A crowd has gathered. People, like me, trying not to get physically involved but calling on the bouncer to just leave the kid alone, go back inside his bar. Eventually, the bouncer retreats. Pressured by the crowd. And I go back inside too.

Then the inevitable. The kid, drunk, beaten senseless, alone, in the cold rain, comes back to the bar door. What else would we expect? He likely has a concussion. Who knows. At least he’s alive.

There’s no talking. The bouncer runs at him. Smashes him through the door and onto the street. Once he’s on top of the kid on the sidewalk he grabs him by the hair and beats his head over and over against the ground. Wedging him against a parked car. Practicing, what I can only surmise must be Brazilian jiu jitsu moves. Crushing the kid this way and that.

It’s only now, after the kid had called out in the door way that his friends, who’ve been gathering their coats and – unbelievably in my mind – paying their bills, come to his side. They come to his side in the rain. The bouncer is now on top of him twisting the kid’s face into the dirty ice at the gutter of the sidewalk. The kid just tries to cover his face with his hands. The last resort of human defence. He covers his eyes. One of his friends, a girl in her twenties, probably a university student, begs the bouncer to stop. “He’s not resisting” she rightly cries.  She get’s too close. He shoves her hard up against the parked car. Smashing her head into the side mirror.

At least half a dozen guys who’ve come along the street just in time to see this man assaulting the girl who’s crying, run toward the bouncer.  They see violence and they are ready to fight. To try and do what’s right. As I believe it is in our culture to do. To try. But more than just try. They’re not thinking in the normal sense. We’re bred of men who ran toward the bullets at Passchendaele, at Vimy Ridge, at Dieppe, on Juno beach.

The violence of the scene is now hard to describe. The bouncer gets one hard punch in on a bookish bearded man – who turns out to be the girl’s boyfriend just come to meet her. There are people of all kinds in the fight – skinny hipsters, at least a few girls in heels, a guy with long dreadlocks. A dozen kids who we’d mistake for our sons. I get in the middle and start yelling for separation, telling the bouncer as before, he should go back inside. Someone yells that they’ve called the cops.

Now, you’d think the cops would be near by. It’s midnight on Argyle St. We’ve talked about this as a community and the police have made some commitments for which we’re paying a lot of money.

It’s a mess. But the situation settles as people begin to talk. It’s good. Speaking from my experience, men rarely fight and talk. It’s one or the other. Then the bouncer, mute, single-mindedly returns to his to his self-alotted task – trodding on this drunk kid. In spite of all, I just want to help the bouncer by making sure he doesn’t get killed or kill this kid. He’s not helping himself – or anyone else. He’s sitting on the kid’s back with the his face in the cement. But at least the other folks are talking now.  Several people try to reason with him. “Just get off his back.” “The cops are on their way.”

The cops may be on their way but it’s another five minutes or more, and it’s everything I can do – not to talk to the bouncer, because he is just not in receiving mode – but to talk to the other people around to keep the situation from escalating back into a mêlée because the bouncer is confining this defenseless and beaten compliant kid.  It’s really hard to watch. But I’m of the mind that this is the best I can hope for until the police arrive. So I keep talking to the people.

The police arrive. A single constable in a patrol car. He starts to cuff the kid before any words are even spoken. It’s obvious he has some connection with the bouncer. He puts the kid in the police car and I talk to his friends assuring them, as their frustration escalates to shrill levels at the uncommunicative officer, that their friend is not being arrested, he will just sit in the car warm and dry until we’ve all had a chance to report what we’ve seen.

There are a dozen outraged people waiting to speak. But the police officer is ten minutes in the car with the kid. People move on. It’s Saturday night and it’s late.

By the time the police officer emerges from the car it’s just me and a couple of the kid’s friends standing in the rain. But the police officer goes and confers at length with the bouncer. We have to insist on speaking. The girl, crying and soaked says she’s been assaulted, which she was, and I state that I would bear independent witness to that. The constable has no interest.

I tell him I want to make a statement about the three assaults I saw. I introduce myself and ask him for his name. He gives his first name. I ask him for his card or identification. He says he has none.

A second constable has come along by this time. I know her. She’s been to my house on a noise complaint. She knows exactly who I am. I ask her for her card, which she gives me.

She also starts to talk to me, turning around my statement about what I’ve seen, pressing the point that the bouncer has to defend himself, he’s in a dangerous situation, he’s allowed to use as much force as is necessary based on his personal perception of the situation. She knows nothing about what happened. She’s defensive. I remind her, I don’t drink.

I suggest to her she’s not listening to me; she’s arguing. She insists that I just have to understand – this is the way it is, she wishes it were different but this is it. I ask them if they will take my statement. They decline. I tell them both, again, that I am willing to be witness to the assaults. But they won’t take my name or number. I remind the constable that she knows where I live and how to get hold of me. I can see it’s going nowhere. I say goodnight. The other kids wait for their friend to be released from the police car. I caution them one last time to stay as calm as possible and physically separate from the police, the car, and the bouncer.

I head back into the bar. The bouncer stops me at the door and stands up close to me. “You’re barred” he says. Your friends caused too much trouble so you’re not allowed into the club. I remind him, because he doesn’t seem to be able to discern, that I am not friends with the now frantic kids. I’m just an observer. Helping him. And reporting what I saw. He’s having none of it. I ask on whose authority I am barred from the Carleton. He says, “The owners.”

Though I likely was the guy who helped him out of a disaster of his own doing, I looked in his eyes and could see he perceived me as the enemy and just like the kid, he would love any excuse to shove my head into the pavement too.

So, soaked and cold, I left. Didn’t get to talk to my friends. Didn’t get to leave any money at Campbell’s bar ( I’ll pay for my pepsi another day), or listen to the Carletones rock out some Springsteen.

As many folks, especially musicians, have observed; that’s Saturday night in Halifax. The scene I describe will repeat in all variations tonight. It’s now 3am. It’ll go on for a couple more hours up at the cabarets.

I’m writing this because I was there. I’m not singling out this bouncer, bar or incident. Like the constable said, this is the way it’s done. This is the norm. It repeats over and over. Sometimes with tragic result. Sometimes just sad.

I’m assuming my ‘ban’ won’t last long. The owner of the bar is one of my favourite people and someone I’m proud to call a friend. And my band is booked to play at the Carleton three times in the next three months.

What I am hoping is that this conversation will last. I’m getting weary of this violence and the violence is getting worse. We have to get at the policies of HRP and HRM government that perpetuate the culture of violence in the downtown. The police and the bouncers (gosh I hate that term) should be ambassadors for the city. But they’re not. They’re recruited and trained to be uncommunicative, suspicious, pack mentality, bullies and enforcers. They’re given leaway for violence that would not be accepted in any other area of civil society. They beat our sons and daughters every night of the week without consequence. And they, the only people paid to set the tone on our community streets in a positive way, are to blame for the violence problem.

It has to stop.

Amen.