On Sunday I took a phone call from a friend.
Her daughter is currently studying in the United States. On Friday night Lucy (not her real name) and two friends, including her boyfriend, celebrated Halloween in a downtown bar.
Lucy smokes so at one point in the evening she went outside, on her own, to have a cigarette. What happened next is described in a heartfelt email her mother sent to the police officer her daughter turned to for help after she was physically restrained by bouncers outside:
Dear xxxx
I am writing as the mother of the young lady who inadvertently got involved in an incident at xxxx on Halloween.
Firstly, I want to thank you for giving her the best advice, which was to go home. My daughter works and studies all the time and she has the grades and commendations to show for it. However, she also smokes and, given the laws of most countries in the world, now spends a lot of time outside of restaurants, office buildings and even bars to have a smoke.
On Halloween she did just that. She was at a bar with her boyfriend and a girlfriend and left the bar to step outside to have a smoke. Unfortunately her timing was not good as the bouncers were in the process of evicting some boys (not a mixed group).
My daughter walked outside the bar and was immediately put in an arm lock by a woman bouncer who assumed that she was part of the all male group they were evicting. She jerked and told them she was not involved.
She then watched as the bouncers held the young, drunk boys who were being kicked out and witnessed the bouncers beating them up. She doesn’t like violence and she has been raised to defend those who are unable for whatever reason to defend themselves.
She put her now free hands up and told them to stop and tried to break it up. A very large, bald male bouncer than rushed up to my size zero daughter and put her in the type of headlock that lead to the death of a man in New York last year.
By this time her boyfriend and girlfriend had come to find her and she was released. She went to find you. You listened to her but, as is probably your mandate, you took the view of the bouncer that she was a perpetrator not an innocent patron who had chosen the wrong time to exit the premises for a cigarette.
Your advice for her to go home was wise and fortunately she took it and then phoned me once she had arrived at home.
While I am grateful to you for getting her away from a situation she should never have been in, I feel very strongly that someone needs to speak privately to those bouncers and ensure that an incident of that nature does not take place again.
1. The bouncers did not properly identify the clients they were trying to extricate.
2. My daughter and indeed all other patrons exiting the premise for whatever reason should have been allowed to do so safely and in no way should they have been misidentified as being part of a group to which they did not belong.
3. The bouncers absolutely have the right to kick someone out of the club but they should not have punched them or physically harmed them. These are drunk college kids on Halloween who are unarmed and simply behaving badly or, as I understand, falling asleep at the bar.
4. My daughter should have never been put in an armlock and she should have been released immediately and the bouncer should have apologised.
5. The grown male bouncer should never have put a size zero female in an necklock that could have caused serious damage.
My daughter’s solution is to never go there again and to forget about the incident. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and it could have been worse.
She also feels badly for not behaving appropriately herself as she let her own anger and frustration get the best of her. Having never been involved in any incident previously and having had a few drinks herself and having been physically harmed this behaviour may not be surprising, but is still not correct.
However I am appealing to you as a professional to have a word with these bouncers. They need to understand that they cannot and should not behave over zealously. If they continue to perform their duties in that manner someone will get hurt - perhaps severely. I am just grateful that my daughter was not more seriously injured.
I appreciate that you are in an untenable situation trying to protect kids behaving badly and the public at large. Bouncers need to feel that you support them. However, I would like to feel that you have taken the time to teach them to do their job properly – or at the very least advised them.
My daughter sought you out because she believed that you would reprimand the bouncers for not handling the situation correctly. Hopefully after my daughter left you did just that – quietly and professionally. However, if you did not, I hope you will because if those bouncers harm someone, anyone, we will all be guilty.
The mother adds:
My daughter told me that, yes, she had had some drinks. It was Halloween and she was taking one night off from her studies. Yesterday her arms still hurt from the over zealous female bouncer.
One can of course sympathise with bouncers and police officers faced with drunken students, or worse. According to the police officer, who responded quickly and courteously to my friend's email, "We had never seen that number of people on the street, it was a hell of a night."
Nevertheless there are some serious issues here and several relate directly to smoking.
One, my friend's daughter would not have been "in the wrong place at the wrong time" had she not been a smoker and forced to go outside for a cigarette.
Two, clubs and bars have a duty to protect all their customers, and that includes those who have gone outside for a cigarette and intend to return.
Three, the very nature of a club or bar will result in some people getting drunk (to some degree) with the result that some may be asked to leave or are thrown out. Those people should never be confused with others who have simply slipped out for a quiet smoke.
Four, I'm all for personal responsibility but any establishment that serves alcohol cannot wash its hands of customers who get drunk. If a customer is moderately drunk but not causing any trouble the proprietor has a duty of care to that customer whether they are inside or outside the premises and planning to come back in after they've had a cigarette.
As my friend said to me again this morning, her daughter could have been any young person who smokes.
The truth – and no-one wants to admit it – is the smoking ban has made going out potentially more dangerous for millions of people.
This was a relatively minor incident but it could have ended far more seriously.
A week or so ago 13 people in a smoking area outside a pub in Porthcawl, South Wales, were injured, some seriously, when a car drove into them. That would not have happened had they been allowed to smoke inside, even in a separate smoking room.
Eight years ago (in what is still, thankfully, an isolated case) a nurse was murdered by a stranger when she was forced to light up away from hospital grounds during a legitimate work break.
Meanwhile how many incidents like the one involving my friend's daughter happen but are never reported because the smoker feels guilty ("It was my fault, I shouldn't smoke") and doesn't want to make a fuss?
Tobacco, as I keep saying, is a legal product. Any reasonable person must accept that smokers have some rights and the right to have a cigarette without being exposed unnecessarily to the risk of assault or worse is one of them.