Annapolis Capital Punishment

At the recent City Council hearing on the bill proposing all bars in Annapolis be allowed to open until 2 am, civic activist and former Public Housing Director Dennis Conti provided this testimony:

Tonight I'd like to present the human side of what is behind some of the crime statistics associated with 2AM bar closings. The following are actual excerpts from the Daily Police Reports:Feb. 17, 1:01 AM, a bar on Main St. Police responded to a report of a fight. Due to the large crowd involved, all on duty Annapolis Officers responded (I repeat, ALL on duty Annapolis Officers responded), as well as some from the Anne Arundel County Police Department. The crowd was eventually dispersed. Two men present had suffered head injuries as a result of the fight. March 2, 1:37AM, a bar on Main St, A 23 year old Huntingtown resident reported that an altercation took place between two male customers while she was patronizing the bar. Another male subject grabbed and groped her. Officers located the suspect in the bar based on her description. March 18, 1:30AM, The residents of a home in the unit block of Duke of Gloucester Street were awakened by the sounds of a vehicle crash. When they went out, they saw that a car had left the roadway, traveled through their yard, over a bush and struck the side of their house. The driver said to the residents, "help me get out, I'm drunk and I can't get ( the car) out."These represent only 3 of 228 incidents that took place between midnight and 2 am in the downtown area in an 18 month period. The proposed legislation will cause an explosion of these types of episodes throughout the City, and a further diversion of our scarce police resources. Finally, it will move us one giant step toward becoming another Ocean City, which I don't think any of us want Annapolis to become.
Conti also produced a graph showing the distribution of calls-for-service for "disturbances" (i.e., disturbing the peace, drunkeness, destruction of propety, etc.) for the period Jan. 2006-July 2007 for ONLY the downtown area. This graph clearly illustrates a HUGE SPIKE beween the hours of midnight and 2 am.