Safety And Licensing Committee Discusses Proposed Ordinance That Would Require Class B Bars And Restaurants To Install Video Surveillance Cameras And Make Footage Available To Police

The Safety and Licensing Committee met 02/27/2024. The meeting ran slightly more than 60 minutes, all but a couple of which were taken up with discussion about public safety ordinance changes proposed by Police Department. The Police would like to create an ordinance that would require all bars and restaurants that serve alcohol to install surveillance cameras at the entrances and exits of their establishments, to maintain those recordings for a minimum of 30 days, and to turn over any footage to the police within 8 hours of a request.

In addition to the creation of that ordinance, the Police would like to update the existing ordinance governing food trucks in the Central Business District, requiring them to close at midnight instead of 4AM (the currently required closing hour). The Police Department believes this change would reduce violence and disturbances that happen around bar closing time when inebriated people gather along the sidewalk to purchase food from the food trucks.

Both items were merely discussed, and no action was taken. The food truck proposal has appeared before the Municipal Services Committee which voted to hold it until the 03/11/2024 meeting. The surveillance camera ordinance will come back before the Safety and Licensing Committee at a future date for action.

The meeting included around 30 minutes of discussion by alderpersons and city staff and an additional 30 minutes of public comment by residents. This post will focus only on the committee discussion and not the public comments.

I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:

The Police Department has been working to improve safety in the downtown area. Police Chief Polly Olson said that they have addressed loitering and large after-bar crowds at the Kwik Trip on North Richmond Street, have provided additional training with police staff to increase their awareness of existing tools available for enforcement, and increased the police presence within licensed establishments.

In addition to that, they wanted to create a new ordinance requiring all Class B establishments to have operable security cameras as customer entrances and exits and to produce that footage upon request by the police in a timely manner. The memo to the committee provided some examples of instances where video footage was beneficial.

Per Assistant Attorney Zak Buruin, other communities in Wisconsin have similar ordinances, and he mentioned that Milwaukee has a similar ordinance that is not related to alcohol establishments but rather applies to retail establishments.

Chief Olson also said that the idea of the ordinance came from Minneapolis that has had a similar ordinance in place since around 2005 and had experienced some success with it.

Overall, the committee members seemed leery of moving forward with the proposed surveillance camera ordinance as written. They asked a lot of questions and discussed options other than the ordinance to help deter crime.

Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) recognized that “balancing personal freedoms and public safety is always going to be a little bit of a dance.” She asked why the Police Department believed adding cameras would deter crime and why they had not deterred crime in the cases presented in the memo.

Chief Olson believed that if it was known to the public that all alcohol serving establishments in the city were recording customers that it would have a deterrence factor that did not happen now when some bars had cameras and some did not.

Alderperson Van Zeeland asked if the city had the ability to require the installation of cameras once an establishment accrued a certain number of demerit points. Assistant Attorney Buruin said that was an option, but suggested it might not result in the same deterrence effect as the proposed ordinance would.

Alderperson Van Zeeland believed, based on the city’s heat map of incidents, that “it looks like everything that’s happening is happening in like a two-block radius.” She felt more comfortable trying to focus on establishments that were causing trouble. She wanted to know if other measures were being taken against bars that had violent incidents take place in them.

The committee and city staff discussed the 12/24/2023 shooting and whether the bar had received a citation for underage drinking. The short answer was that they had not. Although there was an underaged individual inside the establishment, they had a valid ID that belonged to someone else, and he looked enough like the person pictured on the ID that the police and Assistant Attorney Buruin did not believe pursuing a case against the establishment for underage drink was warranted.

Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) asked about the possibility of holding bars more accountable for overserving people who become violent. Assistant Attorney Buruin mentioned that it was often difficult to trace overserving of a person back to any one business. “[O] ne thing that I have found in prosecuting issues that have come up in the downtown, you know, kind of the College Avenue bar close time, is that when everybody’s spilling out and everybody’s intoxicated, the ability to trace back who got drunk where and tie that to a particular business establishment is limited.”

Alderperson Schutlz pointed out that the incidents at Brau Haus and the Maritime Bar both occurred inside the establishments prior to bar close, but Attorney Buruin couldn’t comment on those specific incidents because they were both pending.

Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) expressed a desire for building relationships with people and trying to be friendly. “I think that this would hurt because we’re trying to basically force businesses to do something that they might be willing to do anyway, without actually having a conversation with them about it. I think this is just going to create resentment in our community. I don’t think that this is a good direction to going as far as what our goals of building with our community are.”

Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) was concerned that they were using a stick rather than a carrot against establishments. She threw out the idea of raising the licensing fee for bars but then providing a discount to that fee if they install cameras. “Instead of creating an adversarial sort of business and APD, I’d rather see us create some sort of cooperative city community APD people individually.”

She also felt this proposal was “a bridge too far as far as liberties and business ownership. Businesses should be able to choose how they’re going to operate, and if they’re going to operate in ways that will over serve and cause all these problems, then they will get those demerit points that come with that behavior. And if they don’t, they shouldn’t be penalized for not having a camera. And that’s sort of how my initial feelings of this were, and I’d rather we explore ways to be a community rather than an adversarial sort of relationship.”

The committee also discussed the request to change the closing hour for food trucks to midnight rather than 4AM. Chief Olson explained that the city had dealt with safety issues as far as 23 years ago when she first started working with the Police Department. Back then it was food cars and hotdog stands. There would be long lines, people would say something wrong or cut a line, and with alcohol added to the mix the situation resulted in fights. 23 years ago those ended up in fistfights that the police could handle pretty quickly, but, “That’s not the time we live in anymore. And regardless of whether or not we want to accept that this is the time that we’re living in, now, in the fact that our police department has very limited resources from a staffing perspective, that we cannot continue to move in this manner without having something happen. And we’re starting to see those things happen downtown and in our other establishments. It’s not just a CBD issue. You know, I can cite other taverns and establishments where we’ve had, you know, shootings, stabbings, and very violent crime, where people have lost their life. And it’s time we have to take some action in order to prevent those things from happening.”

She said that there was one particular food truck that was present downtown until 3 or 4 in the morning that served as a collection point for people to get food before they went home. Per Chief Olson, since November they have had 4 or 5 shootings.

Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) asked about the legality of the ordinance. Attorney Buruin responded, “There’s a lot of leeway given to municipalities to regulate the sale of alcohol under Chapter 125.10, and the case law that backs it up. So, there’s a lot of leeway provided for in there, and it is largely a local concern.” There were a number of other Wisconsin municipalities with similar ordinances.

Alderperson Doran appreciated that staff was trying to address the issue; however, “I have some real hesitation about both of these. To me just in in my initial reading and sort of what I’ve heard so far, this feels like we’re, we’re sort of penalizing the wrong people. I think as some of our other colleagues have stated, it just feels—it doesn’t feel right. But I’m certainly open to hearing more conversation about this and seeing where it goes, and I’d like to see if there are some other ways that we can perhaps address these issues, because I think as Chief Olson noted, maybe the root of the problem here isn’t—is the lack of manpower.”

He asked if the police had had conversations with the bars and if there was any willingness on their part to work with the city on it.

Chief Olson said that they had and the feedback they had received was favorable. “[T]he vast majority of them already have camera systems in place that would be in compliance. It would just give us a little bit more leverage in terms of the establishments that have cameras and then choose not to cooperate with turning over video when we have violent incidences happen.”

Alderperson Doran asked what recourse the police currently had if an establishment had a recording but refused to turn it over. Chief Olson said that the police always ask for permission first, but if an establishment does not want to turn it over, the police apply for a warrant and try to secure the video footage that way.

Attorney Buruin noted that that option was only available if the issue being dealt with was a criminal offense. If it was not a criminal offense, the police did not have the ability to get a warrant.

[I’m really not thrilled that Appleton is looking to Minneapolis and Milwaukee for ways to fight crime. It seems to me that they should be looking to cities with better crime rates than Appleton not worse crime rates. Also given everything that has happened in Minneapolis over the last 4 years, it again seems like the sort of place you shouldn’t look to for public safety tips.

It also seems like Appleton hasn’t done itself any favors by having a downtown filled with bars that attract a lot of people, many of whom are from out of town, who go to College Avenue specifically to get drunk.]

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1147939&GUID=221E9008-B6FE-4479-B5DD-1E54225D1D57