What do we do with all the drunks?

If you peruse Scoop Nashville's roster of area arrests, you'll begin to pick up on a trend: time and time again, people are arrested downtown simply for being too drunk. For example, one chap was arrested on April 5th after drunkenly harassing people outside of Hard Rock Cafe on Broadway. When officers made contact, the man admitted that he was drunk; the officers then asked if he could phone someone for a ride home.

So, our drunken protagonist pulled out his vape and started tapping out numbers on it. After informing him that his vape was not a phone, the officers asked the man if he knew a friend's number they could call. Unable to muster enough mental acuity to rattle off a number or confidently state where he needed to go, he was arrested for public intoxication.

This incident is not unique, and if you spend some time trawling mugshots, you'll see the pattern repeated: a person too drunk to get home spends a night in jail after charitable efforts made by police to ferry them home without arrest.

In Austin, Texas, a similar culture of revelry pervades its watering hole alley, Sixth Street. But, the city has arrived at a compelling solution to deal with minor incidents such as the one described above. In 2018, the city of Austin voted to create the Sobering Center: a local government organization controlled by the city council, but able to independently raise money by utilizing its non-profit status.

Like a drunk tank without the law enforcement component, the Sobering Center is staffed by EMTs, and utilized by the Austin Police Department in instances where an intoxicated person does not pose an immediate threat to others. Were our Vape Pen Protagonist from earlier to find himself in a similar situation in Austin, he'd have been carted over to the Sobering Center — where the intake process is 15-20 minutes, compared to the APD process, which might take two hours — and released in the morning without a drunken mugshot and a court date.

Because of the resources freed up by the Sobering Center, Ashlyn Branscum, the Development and Communications Manager, tells me that for every dollar they spend, they generate $1.45 in value by lightening the load on law enforcement. Each year, the center takes in anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 people: sixty percent are drunken tourists of the kind you’d see on Broadway, and forty percent suffer from more chronic alcohol abuse and utilize the center during “non-party” hours.

This is to say that when it comes to dealing with Broadway’s increasing chaos, all options should be on the table. The Sobering Center in Austin presents one possible solution. FROM DAVIS HUNT

📍 Beacon Poll Incoming Tomorrow, the Beacon Center will release results from their second poll of the year. The Center’s poll back in January showed significant support for Governor Lee’s Education Savings Accounts: a staggering 68 percent of participants were in favor of the policy proposal, while only 19 percent opposed the idea outright. 

Though ESAs are a contentious topic, the poll received high praise for its fairness. "While the Beacon Center is far from a disinterested party on the issue, it deserves credit for making all of its poll questions and crosstabs available to the public, as not every answer fits the narrative the group is trying to build,” the Tennessee Journal reported. FiveThirtyEight’s recent pollster ratings reinforce this, which ranks Beacon as the 15th most reliable out of 277. 

🗺️ Blackburn on the Border Wall “In just his first 100 days in office, President Biden issued 94 executive actions to reverse President Trump’s successful border policies and weaken our nation,” Senator Marsha Blackburn wrote in a press release yesterday morning. After visiting the border in March, Blackburn joined Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) in introducing a resolution denouncing the Biden administration’s border policies (or lack thereof). This isn’t the first action she’s taken to stem illegal immigration: in January, alongside Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Blackburn introduced the Creating Obstructions Necessary to Address Illegal and Nefarious Entry Rapidly (CONTAINER) Act, “which would empower border states such as Texas to place temporary barriers on federal land to protect our communities, especially from criminal migrants.”

🗓️ Dates, Dates, Dates Mayor Freddie O'Connell will unveil his transit initiative on April 19th at the Southeast Community Center, in Antioch. Meanwhile, the Senate and House rush to close up shopa , increasing the number of floor sessions to get through the ~100 bills sitting in the pipeline. At minimum, it will last until next week.

DEVELOPMENT

• Owners Of Nicky’s Coal Fired Opens Boutique Event Space In The Nations (Now Next)
• 17-Story East Bank Hotel Refines Design (Now Next)
• Midtown building listed for sale (Post)
• March home sales dip 7 percent year-over-year (Post)
• State could acquire downtown residential high-rise (Post)

MISCELLANEA

THINGS TO DO

View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.

📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.

🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.

👨🏻‍🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.

TONIGHT

🎸 Christian Slader @ The Underdog, 7:30p, Free, Info
+ folk singer-songwriter

🎸 Lockstep @ DRKMTTR, 7p, $10, Info
+ Nashville-based doomgaze trio

🎺 Todd Day Wait @ The Underdog, 11:30p, Free, Info‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌
+ Honky Tonk Tuesday afterparty, down the street

🎸 Honky Tonk Tuesday @ American Legion Post 82, 5p, Free, Info‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌
+ two-step lessons @ 7p, The Cowpokes @ 8p