Police shut down Drifters patio: Rowdy bar patrons put the kibosh on drinking outdoors

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Customers have a smoke on the patio at Drifters in Dixon. The police department is cracking down on drinking on the patio after numerous fight calls at the bar. (Alex T. Paschal/apaschal@svnmail.com)

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DIXON – This is what can happen when someone chucks a beer bottle at a Dixon cop.

Patrons of Drifters Saloon, 85 S. Galena Ave., no longer can drink alcohol on the bar’s patio (or beer garden, depending on your take on the definition).

Police are fed up with bar fights, and have found a loophole in a city ordinance that the chief hopes will keep undesirables out of the downtown area.

The ordinance prohibits public alcohol consumption, except inside taverns and in “enclosed beer gardens.”

The owner of Drifters, Patrick Venier, intended that customers use the patio as a beer garden and built it as such; patrons have been drinking outside for the past 5 years.

Two gates in the small enclosure disqualify it as a garden, though, police said.

“There’s been some miscommunication,” Chief Dan Langloss said.

“We checked with the city attorney; it doesn’t meet the criteria.”

Trouble started at the pub a few months ago with the crowds that have been gathering on the patio, Langloss said.

It came to a head Halloween weekend, when someone threw a beer bottle at an officer who was breaking up a verbal fight.

Langloss thinks the troublemakers are “potential gang members and others with substantial criminal backgrounds.”

“The patrons that are going there are people that we’re either very familiar with, or people we’re not familiar with that are coming in from out of town,” Langloss said.

Drifters has seen a disproportionate number of police calls lately.

Cops have responded to disturbances at the bar 12 times in the last 6 months, Langloss said. Zero’s Tap, two doors down, has had three calls; The Stables, next door, has had only one.

“That doesn’t include the one or two scuffles a weekend we’re breaking up [at Drifters] before they get started,” the chief said.

The bar’s owner said he’s been calling in cops more often lately, though, “because, number one, they told me to.”

“Police tell me to call them, but then when you call them, they use those statistics against you sometimes,” Venier said.

Still, he agreed that “we have some characters who don’t know how to act.”

“And we have to nip it in the bud, before it gets any worse.”

He’s not sure all the troublemakers are coming from his establishment, though.

“There could be people from three, four, five other bars,” he said. “People will spill over and use my patio. Maybe one guy shoves another guy, because it’s pretty tight in there.”

Venier wants to do whatever he can to help police quell the rabble, though. He’s put up signs to notify customers that drinks no longer are allowed on the patio.

Langloss, meanwhile, said he intends to step up enforcement this weekend. Four extra officers will be assigned to the nearby Beanblossom parking lot Friday and Saturday nights, he said.

“And, if the clientele at Drifters is the same as what we’ve been seeing, there’s a good possibility that those officers are going to be inside Drifters, too,” he said.

Officers will be handing out tickets to offenders caught drinking outside. The minimum fine is $25 and the maximum fine is $750; violators also will have to make a mandatory court appearance, which means court costs will be added to the fine, Langloss said.

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