More police hit street to tame Seattle's rowdy night scene

Seattle police Sgt. Brian Kraus couldn't cross First Avenue fast enough to prevent Aaron Porcaro from getting punched and kicked in the head. The 33-year-old South Seattle man was knocked unconscious and struck the back of his head on the pavement.

Traffic slowed. Kraus covered the short distance on his bike and grabbed a canister of pepper spray, dousing one of Porcaro's attackers in the face and stopping a second man from delivering another kick to Porcaro's head.

Other officers arrived, and within minutes, two men were in handcuffs and Seattle firefighters were checking on Porcaro and his 21-year-old cousin, Mark LaBellarte Jr., who also took some blows to the head.

It was 1:50 a.m. last Saturday, and the bars in Belltown had just let out.

"He got cold-cocked," Kraus said of the punch that knocked Porcaro to the ground. "I told them to stop it and gave them a quick dose [of pepper spray]. I got one of the suspects who looked like he was getting the upper hand."

Kraus, the sergeant of the West Precinct's third-watch bicycle squad, has worked the Belltown bar scene for years. Until a few weeks ago, he said, six to eight officers were on duty when people emptied out of the neighborhood's clubs and taverns.

"We couldn't be everywhere," he said. "We'd see a fight and there would be 20 people fighting and there's two of us. What are we going to do?"

In an effort to quell the alcohol-fueled violence in Belltown and Pioneer Square, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and Police Chief John Diaz announced a plan June 22 to keep more officers on the streets until 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays through the summer.

Last week, McGinn said he's also considering whether to stagger closing times for bars or even allow them to stay open all night as a way to curb noise and violence that occur when the bars close down just before 2 a.m. McGinn's proposal would also bring greater code enforcement, more late-night buses and other measures to make it easier for police to cite unruly bar patrons.

The ongoing conversations about the city's nightlife come in the wake of recent violence in Belltown that occurred after bars had closed for the night.

When gunfire broke out early on June 6 outside the V-Bar Noodle Bar & Lounge on Second Avenue, Kraus was one of the first officers on scene. He stayed with the victims — 21-year-old Steve Sok was fatally shot in the head and a 44-year-old man was critically wounded — as other officers searched for suspects.

The alleged gunman and two friends fled to California but were arrested days later and booked into the King County Jail.

Two weeks after Sok's slaying, one man was injured in another shooting and another man was knocked unconscious in a fight with four men.

Quicker intervention

The city's Late Night Public Safety Initiative seems to be working, said Lt. Alan Williams from the department's mobile command center, a modified RV that was parked early Saturday in a vacant lot at the corner of Second Avenue and Bell Street.

"The reason it started was because of the level of violent crime. People were getting shot and robbed and all that," Williams said. "This operation is being measured by the absence of violent crime, not by the number of arrests officers make."

With more than 20 officers on foot, on bikes and in patrol cars in Belltown alone, they've been able to intervene quickly to stop fights from getting out of hand, Williams said.

One example: Early on July 10, a man approached a group of officers and told them of a fight outside Venom, a nightclub at 2218 Western Ave., according to Kraus and a Seattle police report. The man said he overheard one of the combatants say he was going to retrieve a gun from his car, which was in a nearby parking lot.

The officers intercepted three men — who all turned out to be felons — and recovered a stolen handgun and a fully loaded magazine from the car's glove box.

But the cops still can't be everywhere: Around 3:30 a.m. on July 11, a man was knocked to the ground at the corner of Wall Street and First Avenue and repeatedly kicked. His attackers ran off before officers arrived.

"Things have changed"

It was 12:25 a.m. Saturday when Sgts. Jake Magan and Pete Verhaar began making a slow loop in a roughly six-block area that they would end up walking several times over the next couple of hours.

"The point is to walk slow," Verhaar said. "There's no given pattern. You just walk to where the crowds are at."

Verhaar stopped to joke with the doorman outside the Juju, a bar on Second Avenue, and Magan popped his head into Shorty's next door.

"Yeah, things have changed around here," said Shorty's bartender Theresa Collins, who was taking a break outside. "There's a lot more police presence and a lot less crackheads. If there's more presence, there's less drama down here."

At the corner of First Avenue and Bell Street, hip-hop music blared from a speaker Chay Sutton had set on top of a newspaper box in a bid to sell CDs to passers-by.

"We usually come out here every Friday and Saturday and we know a lot of the police officers. They have a lot of new ones now," Sutton said. "This is the most police I've ever seen. But they know we're not the guys they have to worry about, so we don't sweat it."

Making another pass on First Avenue, this time on the west side of the street, Magan and Verhaar walked by a row of motorcycles parked in front of The Frontier Room and chatted with general manager A.J. James, who also manages Belltown Billiards next door.

"I love it," James said of the increased police presence. He thinks people stayed away the first couple weeks that police were out in force. "But in the last couple weeks, it's improved our business — I think people feel safer," James said.

"There are a lot less fights, a lot less altercations — both inside and outside" the bars, said James, 28. "What I like the most is that they're here till 4 in the morning because all these people try to stay and hang out. We in the business call it 'the parking-lot pickup.' "

Closing time

At 1:30 a.m., Sgt. Brian Kraus was bracing for "the push," when bartenders and bouncers begin clearing patrons from their bars.

"It's always quiet before the storm. They should be dumping out pretty soon," said Kraus, stationing himself at the corner of First Avenue and Blanchard Street.

By 1:40, the push was on. Kraus caught a whiff of marijuana but the crowd was too thick to trace the source.

Young women in short, tight dresses teetered by in high heels, their voices rising in high-pitched squeals. Young men smoked cigarettes and threw their arms across each other's shoulders as they waited in the growing queue at a nearby hot-dog stand. One woman toppled over in her red, patent-leather sandals and was helped up by her equally drunk boyfriend.

People continued to spill onto the sidewalk. Kraus reached Bell Street and his attention turned to two groups of men yelling at each other on the opposite side of First Avenue.

He saw the punch aimed at Porcaro before it was thrown: "I could see the verbal confrontation and saw their mannerisms, the waving of the hands. And that one guy was kind of taking a boxer's stance. I could tell somebody was going to tee off," Kraus said later.

After Porcaro came to, he sat on the curb with an ice pack pressed to his head. He told Kraus that the other guys, ages 21 and 22, were making rude comments about his 29-year-old sister, Rebecca. When one of them punched his cousin, Porcaro said, he stepped in and was hit by the second man.

"I've never been knocked to the ground like that," said Porcaro. "I just got a nice bump on my head and I lost my hot dog in the street somewhere."

According to the police report one of Kraus' fellow officers later wrote about the fight, the suspects were arrested but were rejected by jail staff and taken to Harborview Medical Center. The reason: "Each had broken right hands," the report says.

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com