Security expert witness advises on dram shop assault protocols

The bar had a history of assaults. Bars, taverns and nightclubs must have policies and procedures to deal with assaultive behavior when there is a history of it. As identified in “Strategic Security Management”: In the security field, three general types of countermeasures are taken to prevent, mitigate, and eliminate risk: policies and procedures, physical security measures, and security personnel.

There is no evidence that the managers were present in the bar area when this incident occurred. There is no evidence that the managers knew about this incident until after a bartender yelled. There was a policy that managers assumed the role of security and were to be monitoring the lounge area. Additionally, the bar should have had an employee policy and procedure addressing assaults of patrons for its bartenders. They should have a procedure that implemented various nonviolent calming strategies to handle behavior surrounding assaults. The bar should have had a policy and procedure for assaultive behavior between patrons. The bartenders should have implemented the procedure of calming strategies or notifying a manager, so the attacker could have been effectively addressed and the situation diffused. Failure to apply these strategies resulted in the plaintiff being injured.

The expert is a certified protection professional.