This graduation weekend downtown Morgantown will have, depending on one’s perspective, either its normal police presence or an increased police presence in the late night and early morning hours, with the return of the Morgantown Police Department’s bar detail.
The bar detail is five or six officers from the afternoon shift — which ends at 11 p.m. — that are then stationed on foot posts around traditionally busy bars to deter incidents and respond in a timely manner until bars close and people have gone home, Morgantown Police Chief Eric Powell explained.
The detail was practically nonexistent in 2020 because bars weren’t open due to COVID-19, Powell said. Budget problems caused by the pandemic also caused the department to rethink how and how often overtime was used. Even in 2021, the need for the detail wasn’t there until the past few weeks, after Gov. Jim Justice lifted restrictions and activity picked back up.
In 2019, of the Morgantown Police Department’s 53,092 hours of total overtime, 42,000 of it was the bar detail. In comparison, as of the end of April in 2021, the department has about 1,500 total overtime hours, Powell said.
After graduation weekend, the need for the bar detail will be re-evaluated, Powell said. Typically, the detail is cut back after students leave town.
However, even if the full bar detail was downtown, there’s a chance a May 9 fight, in which an Uber driver was attacked while picking up passengers, still could have happened, Powell said. Vincent Kang, the driver, posted on an area Facebook page asking for videos of the incident. He later posted two videos of the attack to his YouTube page. They have since been taken down.
Sometimes, the heavy police presence emboldens people who feel they can antagonize someone without facing retribution — until they get so antagonized that they don’t care the police are there, Powell said.
“Fights happen. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s something that happens regularly all the time, but from time-to-time you’ve got people coming out of bars after a night of consuming alcohol and, you know, it’s going to happen. There’s going to be a fight,” Powell said. “Sometimes (the heavy police presence) is a deterrent and other times they do it anyways,” he said.
Those fights get resolved in various ways — from verbal warnings and orders to disperse, arrests, and sometimes pepper spray.
There are almost 300 comments on Kang’s post, with some criticizing the lack of police presence in the videos. Powell said an officer was downtown with a sheriff’s deputy but was dealing with another fight. Malcom Joyner, 29, was arrested and charged with fleeing from an officer and disorderly conduct in that incident.
Powell said the MPD is actively investigating the attack on Kang and his passengers and is focused on identifying those seen in the video breaking the law — such as the woman who pulled another woman out of the vehicle, the man who hit Kang, and the man who hit Kang’s car.
Powell said he’s going to keep the videos Kang posted to show the kinds of incidents the MPD deals with downtown.
“We’re not just standing around waiting to harass people,” Powell said.
In fact, out of necessity, many minor infractions are overlooked in the late night hours.
Since Powell took over, the department has been at least 10 officers short of its authorized level and while the money for those positions is there, the candidates are not.
“There’s a very real issue with the lack of having people interested,” he said.
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