Fights in the street don't require assistance from security...

Last Thursday, the Night Club featured its first major drink specials in celebration of grand opening weekend.  Thursday night was the first ever "Ladies Night" featuring 1 dollar anything you want drinks for women in a special cup that was handed out at the door.  The catch about the cups was that ladies would only get one unless that cup broke, then they could bring it to a bouncer and we would replace it.  If we saw a guy take a sip out of one of the ladies cups then that cup would get taken and the woman would not be able to receive dollar drinks any longer.

So with the parameters of the drink specials established and the first weekend following radio advertising, we were bracing for a hectic night.  As the night progressed we saw huge crowds and the effects of the drink special on a Thursday night seemed to have major draw in the community.  We caught very few people sharing the cups with guys and were pleased that our warnings at the door were taken so seriously.

The problems did not occur until the end of the night when a huge capacity crowd of around 400 people all feeling the effects of a night of drinking and dancing began to exit the club.  At this time, I was downstairs holding the door and saying good bye to all the bar patrons.  The door to the Bar is also in a precarious position, directly across the street is another local night life hotspot, two doors down is a pub which features great drink specials and two more 'Drunk Factories" are right around the corner with a dive bar to the west and another night club by the harbor to the east.  All of these places see most of their visitors parking in a structure behind the bar across the street.

So with all 5 of these bars seeing the majority of their clients walking right past the club where i work and the two across the street, there is a massive choke point that see's many late night fights and scuffles.  As I was letting out patrons, the other door guys went upstairs to sweep the building and make sure everyone was on their way out of the club, i was left alone at the door.  As the crowds converged and people continued to poor out, a fight broke out in the dead center of Main Street.

"Downstairs, Downstairs, Downstairs!" i called into my radio as i sprinted into the street.  By now the fight had grown and turned into somewhat of a 5 on 5 testosterone and alcohol fueled brawl.  I jumped into the action and began ripping people off of the pile and was quickly joined in breaking up the fight by a few of my co-workers.  With the fight finally dissolved the cops on their way and one of the involved parties on their way home, two gentleman involved in the fight, who had been on the same side started a shouting match over "if they had each others back or not".  My co-workers and i were trying to disperse of the crowd before the police arrived and it seemed like another fight was going to quickly escalate.  We managed to keep them separate for some time before finally in a moment where we weren't paying attention the two started throwing fists.

Annoyed with the persistence of these two gentleman to keep being assholes, i charged the two of them and in an attempt to break them up, tackled them both into the street, this proved to be a mistake. The larger of the two gentleman who had been screaming earlier "I am the baddest motherfucker alive!" stood up, looked at me and muttered under his breath, "you hit me..."

I responded "I didn't hit you and i will not fight you, you need to leave before the cops come." to which he squared up to me and began throwing punches.  An advantage to being sober at two in the morning is that everyone else is drunk.  His punches were mostly wild throws that were easily deflected with my hands.  growing frustrated that he couldn't land a punch the man charged me and tried to take me down by my waist, which again my sober balance helped me to remain standing and I used the pressure points behind his ears to jam his head down and push it towards the ground.

By now my fellow co-workers had taken notice and came over and jumped on the guy, trying to rip him off of me, however his grip around my waist was something similar to a death lock, or the grip an alligator has when it spins around and rips its pray to pieces.  With the weight of my coworkers hitting the pile, we all fell onto the ground and i tried to scoot backwards and push my self out of the instigators hold.  At this point in time the Police decided to finally arrive fifteen minutes after they had been called for help with the original fight.

The cop could only see my back as I was now in a sitting position, with the man holding onto my waist and two or three of my coworkers fighting to get the guy off of me.  The Officer ran up behind me and delivered a fist to the left side of my head screaming "Let go, Police!"

"I work here!" i responded as the cop was able to remove the gentleman from my waist since he stopped fighting at the announcement of the police arrival.  The cop looked at me apologetically and lifted up the man and put him in handcuffs, my coworkers and i headed inside, both out of breath and excited that we had finally seen our first real action working as bouncers.

My manager (The only experienced bouncer of the bunch) came up to me and said that I had done a good job, but we don't need to follow fights into the street anymore unless it becomes a 'severe ass beating.'  But otherwise we do not need to participate in those scuffles due to the rule that once it leaves the club the police wont differentiate between bar security and drunken instigator, thus i give my second rule; don't follow fights into the street, unless it becomes a severe ass beating.