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Following community requests and discussions with bar and club owners in May, city officials are contemplating ways to begin enforcing a long-unused city statute designed to address nuisance complaints downtown, the Portland Police Bureau tells WW.
The regulation, known as a “time, place and manner” ordinance, empowers a city liquor license team to review complaints and potentially restrict the hours that bars and nightclubs can operate—or require other interventions, like hiring security or installing additional noise insulation.
But there’s a catch. “The process to restart doing them is in the works,” Police Bureau spokesman Kevin Allen told WW on June 24. “However, I have no timeline for when we might have the resources to start them back up.”
The last recorded meeting of Portland’s liquor license team was in 2019. In 2020, officials within the city’s liquor licensing program noted recent changes, including “no police reports [and] no capacity on staff to focus on enforcement or to take on more administrative work,” according to a meeting agenda obtained by WW.
So far, the mere threat of additional enforcement appears to be making a difference.
“Within two weeks of the bar summit, a large bar brawl happened at a club,” Allen says. “The owners shut the club down for a week to reset their practices, and they haven’t had any serious issues since.”