An older man we know always had a line he used on the kids when he caught them in mid-fabrication. Even if it was only a little fib, a child's exaggeration, maybe a story about how it was little brother who really ate the ice cream. At that point, the old fellow would cock an eyebrow, put his hands on his knees, get eye-to-eye with the kid, and whisper:
"I may have been born at night. But it wasn't last night."
There's an effort under way in Little Rock to convince the city directors not to move back closing times for bars and private clubs to 2 in the morning. For a couple of months now, some city fathers, and city mothers, have been talking about closing down the taps at 2 a.m. instead of 5 a.m., the better to get everybody off the streets and back home--or at least somewhere safe--before daylight. And before they can get into trouble. Or rather more trouble. (Tell us, we feel like whispering, what good can come of staying at a honky-tonk till 5 in the morning?)
As you can easily imagine, some of the clubs are agin the whole idea. Because closing down at 2 instead of 5 a.m. would cost them three hours of time in which to sell more booze and make more money. That's a straightforward argument. And one the club owners and their lawyers have been making for weeks now.
But, please, don't give us this line about how serving more booze doesn't mean more crime. Because it never helps your case to insult the public's intelligence while you're making it.
Sure enough, there's an outfit representing an association of club owners in Little Rock--everybody's got a lobby--and it's got its hands on some statistics. And has promptly proceeded to mangle them.
It seems that back in 2007, the city of Jonesboro made its private clubs shut down at 2 a.m., too. And a report by the Arkansas Licensed Beverage Association, which represents these clubs, says the numbers out of Jonesboro over the last few years shows cutting back on early-morning boozing doesn't really have much effect on the number of times the cops are called out to those clubs. Why? Because the number of police calls didn't drop in Jonesboro from 2007 to 2012. In fact, the number of calls increased.
See? See?
But if anybody bothered to ask the cops in Jonesboro, they'd tell you that such a version of the statistics is misleading. And how. Because:
--The number of private clubs in Jonesboro has increased from 7 in 2006 to thirty-six in 2013. Which, yes, just might have something to do with an uptick in calls to police in the early-morning hours. A disinterested observer might even conclude that selling more booze early in the morning leads to more problems, not fewer.
--Comparing only the number of police calls made to those seven private clubs that were open in 2006 would be more revealing. A body would find the number of problems reported there has mostly dropped over the years.
--Also, Jonesboro's chief of police, Michael Yates, says a look at the numbers in his town doesn't help but hurts the Little Rock clubs' case for staying open till 5. Why? Because even with the 2 a.m. rule in place in Jonesboro now, clubs there have thrived over the years. (Remember, the town now has 36 clubs.) Or as Chief Yates put it: "We've seen no change to the businesses. The only change has been good. We're not having to sweep up people's teeth out of the dance floor. Fewer people have been shot or stabbed."
All of which sounds like testimony in favor of a 2 a.m. rule. And from a reliable witness at that.
The police chief, who sounds a lot like one, also says this about the numbers: "You can throw stats out and all of that, but you have to use some common sense." Which isn't all that common nowadays. Especially at, say, 4:45 a.m. in a parking lot outside a drinking establishment in, say, almost anywhere.
It looks as if Little Rock's city directors will be talking at some length about imposing a new 2 a.m. closing time on the capital city's clubs in the coming weeks. By all means, let's have that debate. But make it an honest debate. And remember, most of us listening in weren't born last night.
Editorial on 08/15/2014