Downtown Shreveport streets shut down by large groups of clubgoers

By TW Starr

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    SHREVEPORT, Louisiana (KTBS) — A wild and seemingly lawless weekend in downtown Shreveport has a lot of people talking.

Social media posts from Saturday night and early Sunday morning, in what some people call the club district of downtown, have become a topic of conversation for the community and public officials.

The video shows these events happened near Travis Street as hundreds of people blocked the road and, in some cases, jumped and danced on top of vehicles. This isn’t the first time this has happened in downtown Shreveport, but many hope it’s the last.

“Large groups gathered and blocked a state highway. It appears to me we’ve got some unlawful activities going on downtown that we need to get under control. I think that’s where the police department and the fire department come into play. Making sure there are not over occupancies, making sure that the noise ordinances are taken care of, really, it’s going to be up to the police and fire department that these people and businesses are adhering to what are laws are,” said City Councilman Grayson Boucher.

Club goers block street KTBS reached out to a laundry list of people and agencies that would have an interest in what happened this past weekend, including the Downtown Development Authority.

“Regarding the general mayhem in the club district videos, we have asked city officials to consider the underlying reasons persons coming downtown believe these actions are acceptable. We have asked the city to leave all options on the table when dealing with a variety of noise ordinance, alcohol ordinance, public nuisance, and other potential violations and to be willing to work to revoke alcohol licenses of any business encouraging such activity,” said Liz Swaine, DDA executive director.

The weekend mayhem was also addressed at the City Council’s administrative session Monday afternoon. Downtown club owner Timothy Huck said the whole situation could have been avoided if other downtown clubs were not allowed to blast their music via outside speakers at such a volume where it could be heard blocks away. Huck said club DJs could be heard telling people to block the streets.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, Huck said. In November there was a similar situation where people blocked streets and kept 18-wheeler drivers from moving, which backed up traffic.

“My concern is that we’re having to do reactive policing because the police are having to react to after the crowds have already built up. And we can be proactive by simply telling these people to turn their music off from the outside of their building. Turn it down. If you can hear it 75 feet from it, you can tell how far you can hear it. When I can hear the music in my building over my sound system – and I have one of the best sound systems in town – and I can and I can hear it over my sound system then there’s no way it’s not too loud,” Huck said.

KTBS caught up with Mayor Tom Arceneaux after the meeting.

“Well, anytime that you have large groups of people in the in the streets. Very late at night, very early in the morning, depending on your perspective, you have a public safety concern and so we are addressing the issues that we think we need to address to prevent that from occurring. The speakers on the on the outside of the business, something we’re looking at very seriously determine if there was a violation. If there was a violation, then then we want to prosecute that violation to let the owners of those businesses know that that’s simply not a permitted practice. The fire marshal and fire prevention people deal with occupancy inside of buildings, so the outside of the buildings is a concern. There were large, large numbers of people who were there. So the best thing to do is to see if we can’t prevent the crowd from gathering,” Arceneaux said.

KTBS also wanted to know from Shreveport police what laws or ordinances may have been broken and what will be done in the future to prevent this type of thing from happening again. No immediate response was given.

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