The weekend before last, NSCAD students on a school project ended up in a planned confrontation with an Alehouse bouncer. The controversy has raged ever since, perhaps giving impetus to a proposal to license bar security.
The students were clearly on a mission to cause trouble. Bouncers “tend to get angry and tell you that you’re not allowed, which is why it makes good portraits because it’s of big angry bouncer faces,” wrote photographer Tyler Munford in a now-deleted post on his Facebook page. The post seems to have expected violence, and laid out plans for a “man who helps Tyler off the ground when hurt” to be present.
Sure enough, the bouncer took Munford’s camera and pulled another student to the ground, all caught on camera. The fact that the students expected this type of response suggests that bar staff often respond inappropriately.
“It’s unfortunate this happened,” says Peter Martell, general manager at the Alehouse. “Taking the camera was wrong,” he allows, but, “it’s impossible to train for every instance that comes up.”
Martell says his staff receives monthly training, but bouncer training isn’t regulated by the province. Bar security is important and necessary, but without standards defining legal limits, problems will arise.
Many other responses from upset people on both sides of the issue have appeared on news sites, YouTube—now erased—and even a Facebook petition to get two of the students involved suspended, claiming they “need to be brought to justice.”
The bigger issue, however, regardless of who’s at fault, is the fact that too many bouncers in Halifax don’t know where their boundaries lie. Proposed legislation by the NS Department of Justice will require bar security to have proper training, but the requirement has not yet been put in place. Perhaps this overall unsavoury situation will speed up that process.
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Tyler Munford gives the big picture
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.
Even though this pathetic excuse for a student outlined his plan to ambush bouncers at local bars, the Coast still sees it fit to side with the poor “beaten” NSCAD student. This is a cut and dry issue. The student went to a downtown bar looking for trouble and he got exactly what he expected.
What is equally interesting is that the CBC swallowed the student story hook line and sinker, and did not present the other side until the following day after other outlets had reported the truth. A sad commentary on what passes for journalism at the CBC these days. They are more interested in the sensationalism than the truth.
Because the student expected to encounter some violence when doing this project, and ‘got exactly what he suspected’, only implies that bouncers are consistently aggressive. Maybe this is what the point of this whole ordeal is, that bouncers are consistently overstepping their authority and infringing on civil rights, whilst thinking this is their job.
What makes this scenario different is that the recipient of their over reactive aggression was a person who’s intention that night was seemingly to draw attention to this imbalance. Most nights the person getting manhandled would be a bar patron who might feel a bit sheepish about having drank too much, and therefore not feel in a position to challenge this behaviour.
Making a detailed plan and getting a friend to video the event has been called ‘plotting’ and ‘hatching a scheme’, but perhaps it is covering your bases when setting out to document a volatile issue. Whether or not this student was looking for trouble or not, DOES NOT change the fact that he was on public property, was not a bar patron, and did not make any physical or verbal contact with the bouncer- he took two photographs. Provocation or not, no one (security guards, police, bouncers or an average citizen) has the right to react like this.
And yes, most media in town have been weighing in on this story since the first day it broke, it seems without an complete story and lots of speculation.
I saw this on TV and had mixed feelings about it. True, evidence seems to indicate that it was obvious that the students went there to antagonize the bouncers, but taking a picture outside a club is hardly grounds to have your camera grabbed out of your hands. The other important point is that the students were not “in the club”, they were on a public street and what right did the bouncer have to control what was happening on a public street. Their job to control should start within the club, not outside the club.
If you go looking for trouble, you will find trouble.
Don’t go bleating when the outcome is somewhat different than you expected.
Not the first time CBC has been duped, won’t be the last as they chase ambulances, fire trucks, accidents. Welcome to the TV version of National Enquirer.
What do all the people at CBC TV Halifax do ?
Good call kmac – couldn’t have said it better myself!
kmac- I’m certainly not trying to insinuate that the bouncers handled this incident in the proper fashion. Quite the opposite. Of course every citizen should be allowed to snap a few pictures on a public street. However, one individual’s rights do not (maybe that should read “should not”) allow him/her to provoke a violent reaction to prove a point. One wouldn’t want one to provoke an individual to murder in order to prove he or she is a murderer. Sorry, in my opinion this child is douchebag for planning to cause a disturbance on what could have been an otherwise peaceful evening.
The bar employee overstepped his authority by policing a public sidewalk. While the students were instigating something (if thats true), they hadn’t been inside the alehouse and the only policing that should have occured was a call to the HPD. Assaulting someone is a crime, and these students should never have been touched by the bouncer.
This article is a piece of shit. The still photo from the clip you show in the body of the story shows the student on the ground clearly implying he was beaten down. Watch the video again and at about the :55 second mark you can see the student drop to the sidewalk on his own and start to kick like a little girl .If I was that guard I would have kicked that lttle fucker right in the nuts…hard.
I’ve got a better headline for your story…
“NSCAD art students beating for baiting brouhaha raises questions over proper training for art students and ‘journalists’.
OMG huskie alum.
Does that not scream ‘roided up football player, turned bouncer!
husky alum, the person on the ground kicking “like a little girl” is, in fact, a female of small stature that the bouncers are man-handling in their attempt to steal Munford’s camera. Just to clarify. Douchebag.
It was a little girl.
Take off your oh,so trendy black windbreaker, Huskie alum,
Stare sadly into the mirror as you realize that all those 19 yr old’s that you wave thru the front of the line think that you are really creepy.
I call BULLSHIT. Laying hateful hands on anybody is a crime, antagonized or not, picture taken or not, bully-on-a-payroll or not. Nova Scotians making excuses for this sort of behavior is where this problem begins… and stays. What a fucking hole.
It’s embarrassing that a dispute between some dumbfuck kid with no future and an expensive camera, and some other dumbfuck kid with a few affliction t-shirts, an oversized bottle of creatine, and no future qualifies as news.
“He took my camera! He took my picture!”
Grow up, get a real job, shut the fuck up, both of you.
Gorillas in the mist… aka bouncers in Halifax.
Perversely power heady bouncers should be charged to the full extent of the law. They seem to frequently cross the line when exercising their ‘duties’. This sort of problem keeps coming to surface when people are given a sense of power over others…..It stinks.
On another matter……why in hell does Kay stay in Nova Scotia with such disdain and contempt for Nova Scotians? Such constant repugnance and revulsion toward us!…..She stinks.
Well said,
Bouncers need to know were the line is and anyone who cannot control their temper when confrontations arrise, shouldn’t be in that line of work.
I thought journalists were supposed to get both sides of the story. But you never even called the art students involved, just Peter Martell, a master manipulator. You got so many facts wrong it’s not even worth recounting them. Your lazy so-called reporting does more harm to society than any misguided art student or angry bouncer because people tend to believe what they see in print. Grow up, Charlene Davis. Make that extra phone call.
Just try to get into a Halifax bar while being black!
A friend of mine (black dude) was in a private party, in a private room at the Dome last summer, and when a security guard heard him swear while telling a story to his girlfriend (in a corner, just the 2 of them…in said private room that was PAID FOR), my friend was kicked to the curb for “swearing” in the bar. I don’t think I need to say more.
I don’t go to the alehouse because if they’re going to refuse my friend simply for wearing a hoody and slightly baggy jeans I guess they’re too good for me. I’m not worthy of the precious alehouse!
sodeypop…you are right…in Halifax, even if you dress “black” you don’t get in.
If someone was taking pictures of people entering my establishment- that’s grounds for getting your ass beat, a club with bouncers, duh… what were these kids thinking? likewise I have a problem with people 3 feet away from me taking pictures of me, not a crowd (thats one thing) but ME specifically. i would knock your ass out too. nscad students dont get special privilages because they’re “art students” …. that shit doesn’t still well with some people and it’s belligerent to act like you won’t have to answer to that. everyone knows bouncers act like Neanderthals. dont act so ignorant, everyone.
people abuse positions of authority? what? now i’m scared to leave my house….
the solution to a problem is not often more legislation + tighter rules. (does that sound radical? .. sounds common sense to me) the tighter the rules, the easier to navigate the pressure points.
I don’t think the students did the brightest thing in the world, but the response was overly aggressive and uncalled for – especially those people who are still pursuing the students to threaten them, which has apparently happened. Untrained bouncers aren’t a new issue to the city, this is just another example. Just train them properly to an expected standard. It’s safer for everyone.
nobody was pulled or pushed or thrown to the ground she clearly falls on her own to try and escape the bouncer or make it look like the bouncer threw her, the bouncers body motion is goin in a completely different direction then hers right b4 she goes down and nobody held her down the guy in the suspenders just held her feet so she wouldn’t kick the poor bouncer stupid little bitchthe only reason it looks like the bouncers takes her down is because he was holding on to her while she was falling trying to prevent her from smashing her head on the ground