A Coast Weelky Ride Along in Downtown Monterey

Friday the 13th and a full moon seemed the ideal night for Coast Weekly's police ride-along in downtown Monterey. Our reporter and photographer arrived at the station at 10pm, braced for trouble. Officer Shambe Wright greeted us for the three-hour ride-along on his downtown Monterey beat. "It''s an African name," he explained about his unusual moniker. "Means strength of a lion." No joke, either--Wright played pro football for a few years after college, before he returned to his native Monterey to become a police officer.

As we stepped into the patrol car, Wright outlined his nightly routine: He drives around downtown, parking his car every hour or so to walk through the bars and clubs on Alvarado Street. Well, not all the bars and clubs. Cibo''s, LALLApalooza and the hotel bars only need a cursory glance and a quick walk-through now and then. "McGarrett''s, the Mucky Duck, Viva''s--we go through them pretty extensively," he said.

Our first call came at 10:20pm--a woman requesting a police escort to her car in a dark parking lot on Cass Street. So far, so calm.

At 10:30, things picked up when Wright suddenly stepped on the gas and followed a souped-up Chevy into a gas station. We stayed safely behind as he accosted the young male driver, inspected his license, and then returned to the patrol car. "Kid was driving without his headlights," he explained.

At 10:45, we parked and began the first bar walk-through of the evening at the Mucky Duck Pub. "Ninety-five percent of the trouble downtown at night is alcohol-related," Wright said. "People get liquid courage. They do things they wouldn''t ordinarily do. And when you mix in scantily-clad women, there can be trouble."

As the evening progressed, the picture came into sharper focus. For us, not for the slightly and not-so-slightly inebriated party-goers we encountered. By 11pm on a Friday night, Alvarado Street is awash in drink.

For the most part, it was pretty tame stuff. A group of women tourists reeled past us at one street corner, claiming first to be nurses and then doctors, and offering to "fix whatever ailed" Wright. He smiled good-naturedly and let them pass. A guy who''d had one too many tried to park his car in front of the State Theater, and quickly moved over to let his girlfriend try after he spotted Wright''s badge. "We''re in love, not drunk," the young woman insisted, as the couple giggled past us.

Wright explained that he only arrests people for public drunkenness if they''re endangering their own or another''s safety. "If a guy is pretty drunk but has friends to take care of him, we''ll use some discretion," he said. "But we do arrest a high number of publicly intoxicated people here in Monterey. It''s better to get them off the street." Things aren''t always as slow as on this particular night, Wright said. The evening before, a drunken brawl at Blue Fin Billiards on Cannery Row pulled in five cop cars to quell it.

At 11:15, we hooked up with Officer Marty Hart, a 10-year veteran of the police force, and we headed for McGarrett''s. "It''s hit or miss there," Hart said. "Some nights you think there''ll be trouble, and nothing happens. We''re a psychological deterrent."

"When people see us, they get ''undrunk,''" adds Wright.

Monterey is officially "neutral" ground for youth gangs from other cities, who come here to dance and party in peace, but fights do break out, said Wright. Sometimes a guy gets a little drunk, looks sideways at another guy''s girl, and the fists start flying. Sometimes knives are involved, but usually things don''t get rougher than that. Usually.

"When fights break out, they break out all over the room," Wright said. "We don''t rush in and try to save the day, because they''ll just be all over us. We watch, try to identify the trouble-makers, and get involved if we see someone getting hurt.

"We don''t tolerate a lot of things they''ll tolerate in other cities," he continued.

Police work in downtown Monterey is mostly about working with people, according to Wright. "Only about 20 percent of what we do is cops and robbers," he said. "People get the wrong impression from TV shows. This business is about people, it''s not about being badge-heavy. When you''re contacting someone on the street, you''re basically impeding their civil rights. When you combine that with a [superior] attitude, it can be very intimidating."

What does Wright think of another dance club opening downtown? Well, certainly he would prefer not to see more inebriated young people cruising the streets late at night. But it won''t change his reality, either way. "Whether it''s one club or 100 clubs, I have a job to do," he said. "And I''ll do it."