Enough of this drivel from Milwaukee's Mayor Tom Barrett, Alderman Bob Bauman, Police Chief Ed Flynn, and Marsha Sehler, member of the Milwaukee RiverWalk District.
Quit blaming the bar and restaurant owners for the gunshots and the violence and the general pandemonium at RiverSplash.
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
As a bar and restaurant owner in downtown Milwaukee, R.C. Schmidt has been around about a year longer than RiverSplash, which survived a troublesome 19th edition, one marred by fights and a shooting, over the weekend.
Looking back at what went wrong, and what went right, Schmidt was adamant Tuesday that changes will be made to ensure the festival celebrates its 20th anniversary.
"We shouldn't stop serving the city with festivals and outdoor activities, and promoting the downtown, because of an incident that we can prevent," said Schmidt, who owns three restaurants in the Water St. area, including the Water Street Brewery, which predates RiverSplash.
Schmidt stopped short of spelling out those changes, but alluded to the list that city officials rattled off in response to the chaotic post-festival mess on Saturday night.
Ald. Bob Bauman, who represents the downtown entertainment strips that host RiverSplash, even suggested the festival could be shut down after disorderly people threw bottles at police, fought in the streets and intimidated fest-goers and bar operators.
Bauman blamed the problems on the bar owners, saying they failed to provide sufficient security or curb excessive drinking.
Based on the comments from a news conference he hosted Monday, the topics of discussion when the bar owners, the police, festival organizers, the mayor and the aldermen sit down to talk will be: cutting off sales of hard liquor in large quantities, adding security, limiting the crowd size and closing earlier than the current 11:30 on Friday and Saturday nights.
Those steps would help prevent RiverSplash from deteriorating again into what Mayor Tom Barrett described as a "drunken brawl."
The problem on Saturday night, though, was a surprisingly large turnout of rival gang members, according to Pablo Velazquez, operations director for Central Protective Services, the private firm hired to provide security in the strip of businesses on Old World 3rd St.
Velazquez noticed the gang presence on Friday night, as he oversaw a team of seven security officers. Similar groups, wearing colors and identifying themselves in greetings, returned around 10 p.m. on Saturday, he said.
..."I've been at RiverSplash for the last three years now, and what we saw this year, for me, was unexpected, that we saw the many youths and gangs there that appeared on Saturday," he said.
It's the gang members and the wannabes, not the festival's closing time or the sales of hard liquor.
It's the thugs, stupid.
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