Old Town partiers shake up police patrols

The 11 o'clock hour starts with an alcohol-fueled sucker punch outside Illegal Pete’s.

The pair of Fort Collins police officers working on this Friday night spin on their heels, reversing their walk near the Fort Collins Rescue Mission on Linden Street to make a beeline for the bustling bar and burrito joint on nearby Walnut Street.

A woman waves Sgt. Heather Moore and Officer Mike Harres toward a yellow-hued, brick-walled alley where police are met by a man holding the right side of his bloody face.

What happened?

A guy walked outside with a beer in his hand.

The manager told him he couldn't take his beer to go.

The man's answer? A nasty left hook that pushed the manager's glasses into his cheek. He'd never been punched before, he tells the medical responders who flood the area to treat him.

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The suspect is gone, described as a white man with fuzzy black hair and a long-sleeved gray shirt. He ran toward Old Town Square but ducked out of sight. The officers are armed with a name, his photo and a crinkled, scribbled-on receipt, so they aren't overly concerned about being able to find him. They stroll toward the city center, unsure of what the rest of the late-night shift has in store.

They whisper something that embodies so much of how policing in downtown Fort Collins has changed: "I'm sure we'll catch up with him later."

So it goes for District 1, the team of 11 Fort Collins police officers assigned to the downtown police beat, which is the busiest district in the city. Calls for transients congregated outside businesses by day turn to a surge in disturbance calls at the bars by night. ​

It's different than it used to be a few years ago when booze-induced brawls were common, peeing in public was ubiquitous and overwhelmed cops scrambled from call to call, the effects of a city growing up and an increasingly desirable downtown district.

"That was kind of like a turning point, so to speak, when we really started looking at what more meaningful and broader changes we could make in the area," said Lt. Jeremy Yonce, who oversees D1. "From that came things that are still in place today.”

Old Town, Fort Collins' hub for commerce and partying used to be a piece of a much broader coverage area.

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As Old Town continued to draw more people, so too came increased disturbances and the need for changes. Top police brass tightened boundaries of the Old Town patrols, and the number of officers patrolling the area surged.

Where there used to be five cops handling chaos on a Friday night ,there are now typically seven and a sergeant. That's in addition to improved staffing plans with patrol cops elsewhere in the city who can be pulled for the most volatile time of night -— midnight to 2:30 a.m.

Multiple teams of two to three officers now spread from south Old Town restaurants to places nearer Jefferson Park. Spending the evenings on foot, police log upward of 5 miles each night, generally in first-gear stroll mode — like when they move through the rooftop bar at Tony's, a popular late-night gathering spot.

When a call of a parking lot standoff airs, that pace shifts into a fifth-gear race through the alleys.

"The biggest benefit is the visibility and deterrence and ability to intervene earlier," Yonce said of the added foot patrols. "There’s someone already close by so they’re already intervening before calls even come in."

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Moore and Harres wander up College Avenue, checking on a homeless man getting medical treatment for a reported heart condition at Blue Agave Grill. A  tricked-out classic car peels south onto College Avenue, stunt-driving on two wheels from Mountain Avenue and disappearing from view.

The officers inch through the sea of bargoers congregating near The Drunken Monkey when one patron extends a hand — the first in a series of greetings through the night.

“With everything that’s been going on, we just wanted to say thank you,” the man in his 20s said. The handshakes turn to high-fives as the night wears on. There are a few less-than-supportive remarks, but those are few and far between among the late-night crowds.

The 2015 Fort Collins Citizen's Survey indicated about 95 percent of respondents felt safe always or most of the time in Old Town during the day, down from nearly 100 percent the year prior. About 70 percent of respondents said they felt safe downtown at night, the Coloradoan reported previously.

FCPS DIstrict I responded to nearly 9,400 calls for service in 2015. That's in addition to countless numbers of police-initiated actions.

"We have some pushing and shoving and some fights here or there," Yonce said. "But overall, I think the perception for those who are actually out there at night is it’s pretty safe."

When police aren't standing cross-armed near the Squares's big bear and bells — perhaps the supreme late-night people-watching perch in town — they're wading through the crowds.

With hawk-like attention to detail, the officers check their watches and look up at the growing 1:40 a.m. crowd of patrons sent outside after last call. Someone starts shoving. It all ceases when the badge appears. A few skirmishes commence, directly correlated to the ratio of men to women at this time of night, police say. It might be unscientific, but it's true.

A woman in tears approaches the officers — there's a surprising amount of crying at closing time if you really look around.

She says she lost her purse that had her phone, and her friends all left her. An officer loans her his iPhone as hundreds of partiers pour toward the fountain. The woman paces. Police agree to help her find a safe ride or place to sleep if she can't get a ride home — a not uncommon practice for bargoers in summer and homeless people in winter.

Nothing major erupts on this Friday night shift, aside from a 2 a.m. brotherly shooting incident outside of these officers' jurisdiction.

As Harres talks to a man bounced for trespassing from Rec Room, the officer grabs his earpiece and pauses before running full-speed 80 yards across Old Town Square. Outside Bondi Beach Bar, a bouncer in blue grapples with a gray-shirted man with fuzzy black hair.

As predicted, they catch up with the man accused of throwing the sucker punch outside Illegal Pete's. Harres and Moore arrive, the man is pinned to the ground and moments later hauled away in handcuffs.

Patience, part of a new patrol strategy, pays off for the police officers.

Reporter Jason Pohl covers law enforcement for the Coloradoan. Follow him on Twitter: @pohl_jason. 

Correction, 10:37 a.m.: An earlier version of this story used 'Division 1' instead of 'District 1.' All references have been updated.