So, I’m sitting at one of my watering holes this evening, New Year’s Eve, trying to get a couple in before the amateurs hit the streets. As I’m tipping one back, one of Milwaukee’s finest comes in to give the bartender a heads up that they will be back to check that the bar isn’t over capacity. I’ll admit that capacity is somewhat of an issue especially if a bar or club is grossly overstuffed, but on a night like New Year’s Eve when there will no doubt be many more serious crimes, like drunk driving, muggings, assaults and murders are being committed, it’s hardly reassuring to know that our police will be doing the petty job of counting heads. A job that amounts to harrassing honest business owners.

In a year that has seen the police force decline, down 250 from the usual 2000 , to the point that they’ve had to cut back on routine police duties like responding to burgalar alarms (!?) to keep budget costs down, why all the attention to such a minor code violatoions as capacity? While we can’t blame the police for the dramatic increase in murders over last year, I think we can all admit that the force is stretched pretty thin. So why are the police intent on spending valuable resources to punish basically law abiding folks for something so minor?

It just seems to me that on a night like New Year’s Eve, where so much truly dangerous and illegal activity is going on that capacity checks should be pretty low on the list and yet they appear to be right at the top. It seems to me that this is nothing more than an admission that our police force has given up on preventing actual crimes while lining their pockets with nuicence fines.