BILLINGS — The Billings Police Department notices when bars become problem areas, and behind the scenes, the agency initiates change.
And it appears to be working.
“We’ll sit down to have a meeting to discuss what the problems are and what the potential solutions are. Or what the potential consequences are if things aren’t taken care of,” Lt. Matt Lennick said.
Lennick says a bar becomes a notable problem when officers are continually being called to the establishment, which exhausts resources and causes an already short staff to work longer hours. So, they meet with the bars drawing the problem crowds.
“The ones that come to the top of my mind are, I think we did one with the Carlin (the Montana Avenue bar that is now closed), we did one with Rowdy’s (now Daisy Duke's), we did it with Shooters, we did it with the Wild West,” Lennick said.
Police discuss over-serving alcohol, serving minors, and improving security and lighting in parking lots.
These meetings have been shown to help.
In 2020, police had a total of 197 calls for service to Shooters Bar, Grill & Casino behind West Park Promenade. In 2021, around 152 calls.
“We met with St. John about two years ago, and right at the moment I kind of had an epiphany to go, I want to make some changes and be the best steward I can be as an owner,” Michael Morgan, owner of Shooters, said. “It’s been almost two years since we’ve had an issue.”
In the first five months of 2023, Shooters has had just 14 calls for service. It's a decrease Morgan credits to meeting with police and the changes he has made inside the business.
“We changed and took the dance floor out, and we started trying to get a different type of demographic. What happened was is it moved out a lot of the knuckleheads that were coming in. We don’t want to have a space for those types of people,” Morgan said.
Shooters also added a new casino and poker room to draw in a new crowd. Morgan said they did see a loss in revenue when they first made these changes, but business is increasing every week.
“You should walk through the doors and see that Shooters has been completely revamped,” said Tawny Solberg, who runs the poker room at Shooters.
More recently, police met with America’s Wild West on Southgate Drive shortly after a 21-year-old man was shot and killed in the parking lot.
“Once (the problems) start, it's easy to track like you can see it. Like, you know that that establishment has turned into a problem with the crowd it’s drawing,” Lennick said.
In 2022, police responded to 245 calls to America's Wild West. In the first three months of 2023, 85 calls. After the meeting, police have had nine calls in the last two months.
Lennick said the drastic decrease could be because of the negative attention the shooting received on social media, which led to smaller crowds at the bar. But also said the meetings owners have with police do help improve safety.
“The owners that are willing to implement the solutions that we put in place genuinely see a reduction in the amount of calls for service and the amount of resources that we’re having to put in,” Lennick said.
