Police Confront Rise in Violence in Downtown San Angelo

A rise in violence on the downtown drag has prompted San Angelo Police to increase patrols on the weekend, with the singular objective of cleaning up the crime before more people fall victim and a higher toll of decreased traffic is levied upon local businesses.

Danger, drunken brawls and a careless crowd have started to gather in the center of San Angelo’s entertainment district, posing a risk to night-out patrons and damping the droves that used to congregate in social settings.

“We started noticing it recently, and I’ll tell you what the problem is,” Police Chief Tim Vasquez said with conviction. “The problem is when you have establishments giving away drinks at a very, very low price and then over serving, it creates those types of problems.

“Used to, you could see all kinds of people walking the streets at night and having a decent time, but now we see some intimidation, we see fights happening and again, over-served people being released out into the street and causing trouble.”

On July 12, a wave of people flowing out of Wise Guy’s bar in the heart of downtown prompted Fuentes Bar Manager Ryan Herrera to shut his doors early for the first time in four years. Police there called for backup, and had encountered multiple victims in at least two altercations. Two were injured and loaded into ambulances. By the end of the incident early Sunday morning, three were behind bars.

“I have a city marshal that works my door on Saturday,” Herrera said. “They were looking for somewhere else to go and even the manager from Fat Boss’s said ‘You know, hey, no one else is coming in’. We closed down [too]. I basically said that the people that are in here can stay…They started coming this way, like waves of people, and a couple came in and I go, ‘you know what, shut the doors’. I’ve never had to do that, never.”

A few days later, a man was shot and injured downtown near the intersection of S. Chadbourne St. and Twohig. The same suspects who were arrested in the Wise Guys brawl days prior were named suspects in the shooting. The next weekend, two more fights broke out at Wise Guys leading to three arrests.

Herrera said that recently, the owners of various downtown establishments met with one of the assistant police chiefs to discuss the widening problem. Business owners, gastro service workers and managers have all felt the spike in violence, and there is a fairly loud consensus as to where that problem is coming from.

“I’m not going to say for sure it’s one bar,” said Rex Rogers, owner of The Deadhorse Bar and Rock and Roll Lounge, “but it does seem to coincide with [Wise Guys] opening. We never had that kind of trouble down here before at all. I mean, at all.”

Rex Rogers has been a mainstay on S. Chadbourne Street since 2007, when he and Lanie Daniels opened up The Deadhorse, blazing a path that set the stage for nightlife development that continues today. Rogers said he first began to notice a change between three and six months ago, but recently things have started to spin out of control.

“Something’s going on over there, whether it’s over serving, their security, if they’re rude to the customers—I don’t know,” Herrera agreed, again referencing Wise Guys. “You’ve got a lot of stuff going on over there and you don’t hear about that going on anywhere else.”

While over serving and dirt cheap drinks have been cited by Vasquez and employees of most downtown establishments as contributors to the rise in crime, another issue has been brought up on the matter of security. Most downtown bars hire off-duty police officers to work their doors on weekend nights as security, and up until recently, Wise Guys has only employed bouncers. Some have suggested that the volatile mix of cheap alcohol in excess and a lack of authority have combined to create a combustible environment, one that could be avoided with thoughtful business practices.

“We’ve always had SAPD working with us here at our bar, so we’ve never really had problems here at our establishment,” Rogers said. “We have noticed, obviously, more problems downtown within the last three to six months, but SAPD and TABC have both talked to us and they’re working on the problem.”

Henry Ramos, the owner at Wise Guys, said he didn’t wish to “be a part of any more drama”. He attributed the perceived rise in violence to San Angelo LIVE!, stating that the report on the brawl that took place outside his establishment was riddled with lies and denying that there has been any real increase in crime.

“What y’all are doing is changing the perception to the public, which is not true,” he pointed a finger at San Angelo LIVE! “We don’t sell candy; we sell alcohol. And when you sell alcohol, the people[‘s] dynamic changes. They think different. Us, as a bar owner, we have to be responsible and make sure that nothing takes place and we’re following every rule.”

Henry did address the issue of security, stating that he budgets nearly $1,000 per week for bouncers and officers, a demand he is meeting due to the large capacity of the bar.

“We have six bouncers and three cops,” he said on Thursday evening. “Moving forward, we recognized the need to add more security because our establishment is a lot larger than any other establishment downtown. We’re not an 80 [person] capacity. When you’ve got 1,000 people in one environment, a lot of different personalities, of course things are going to happen. And this is the thing: we are not the only bar downtown that generates fights. Every bar has fights.”

On Friday, however, Chief Vasquez told a different story. While Wise Guys did, at one time, employ San Angelo Police Officers as security, that relationship came to an end long before Henry claimed to employ them on Thursday evening.

“Our officers aren’t allowed to work there anymore,” Chief Vasquez said. “I pulled them out last weekend. They were working there but because of the issues that we’re facing and the type of policing that needs to be done, we’re not going to be working that establishment.”

Henry also asserted that while over serving is an issue in all bars, he does take measures to ensure that his staff are watching patrons and attempts to correct bartenders who may be pouring a little too generously. The problems his bar faces, he said, are not foreign to other establishments.

“Every bar in San Angelo, Texas, has [special] drink prices,” he said. “We just follow the rules that everybody else does. Every bartender in San Angelo over serves. Everybody does the same thing. Yes, it happens in our bar, I have to admit it, it happens in every other bar too.”

But other members of the gastro industry feel differently, and many are frustrated with the bad reputation the heart of the city is getting and the effect that reputation is having on business.

“People go there (to Wise Guys) to drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, because it’s cheap. It’s cheap on the weekends, cheap to drink. It brings a lot of business downtown, but you don’t see fights anywhere else,” Herrera said. “If somebody comes in [to Fuentes] and they appear to be intoxicated, you know, we don’t serve them. We offer them chips and hot sauce and water or whatever, maybe a coke or tea, but we let them know if they’ve been elsewhere and they’re going overboard.”

Another bartender from a different establishment who wished to remain anonymous said that her tips have dropped by nearly $100-200 on the weekends recently, simply because people don’t want to come downtown and worry about being victimized.

“It is impacting our business,” Rogers said. “I would say the foot traffic downtown has gone down considerably with the crimes that have been committed and reported and some of the element that have been coming down. I’ll also say that in the last week I’ve already seen a big change in the climate downtown since the police have stepped up their efforts.”

Confronted with the fact that numerous employees in downtown businesses have openly stated they believe his establishment is contributing to the trouble, Henry shrugged it off.

“Well, of course. We have a thousand-plus capacity, and when you reach into people’s pocket, it’s going to hurt them,” he said, naming himself the “new kid on the block”. “I’m not here to compete with nobody; I’m just here to conduct business. I’m not here to attract punks or low lifes or nothing like that. Every business has its ups and downs.”

Since July 13, Chief Vasquez has been authorizing overtime for a team of four to six officers on the weekends, tasked with circulating the bars and checking for signs of intoxication in an effort to prevent the problems. While a very loud consensus from those who work downtown has echoed concern over Wise Guys specifically, Vasquez said his officers are focusing on a couple of establishments that seem to be causing a problem, while circulating the area to mitigate the violence.

“Obviously we still have some real good establishments downtown that aren’t causing any problems for us, but the ones that are are the ones that we’re going to pay special attention to,” he said. “And I’ve given my officers the ability to use zero tolerance in a location that has become problematic for us.”

Additionally, Vasquez is working to get additional lighting in some of downtown’s darker alleyways and officers are starting to walk the bars on Sunday through Thursday as part of their regular duty assignment.

So far, feedback has been positive from bar owners, who appreciate the PD’s effort to clean up the area.

“In the last week I’ve already seen a big change in the climate downtown since the police have stepped up their efforts,” Rogers said. “It’s been better and I feel pretty confident that things will turn around.”

Without enough officers to regularly assign patrol of the downtown area, Vasquez said he’ll continue to authorize the overtime until this portion of the city has been cleaned up. The SAPD is working closely with TABC on this matter.

“There’s a lot of good people that have invested time and money—in creating business downtown, and it frustrates me to see their businesses hurt because of the behaviors of the people that are coming downtown,” Vasquez said. “We’ve been contacted by people downtown—by visitors, by other establishments—in regard to some of the behavior …some of the businesses are hurting because people are afraid to go down there. It’s our primary mission right now to clean up that area. Our citizens don’t appreciate it, we don’t appreciate it, and we’re going to deal with it. This is something that we’re going to do until we clean up downtown.”