Cops: No Tolerance For Halloween Drunkenness, Pissing -- Making This a Remarkable Day in S.F.

By Joe Eskenazi Fri., Oct. 30 2009 at 7:59 AM

Categories: Local News

It's a butterfly knife, Charlie Brown...

At yesterday's SFPD press conference, Chief George Gascon -- he of the nifty suit -- appears to have dressed as a police officer for Halloween. You can, too -- but if you tote a weapon, stumble drunkenly through public thoroughfares, urinate or defecate in public, Gascon promised that San Francisco Police will have zero tolerance. Well, to borrow a phrase from another holiday, "Why is this night different from all other nights?"

Following a shooting that left nine people wounded in 2006, the city curtailed the massive Castro Halloween (and shooting and pissing) celebration for '07. While many would-be revelers predicted that there was no way to keep San Franciscans from enjoying their God-given right to party on the streets -- there was. That year more than 600 cops lined the streets of the Castro, Muni service was largely curtailed, and businesses shut their doors early. The scene felt eerily like a costume party in the midst of a heavily guarded prison yard; it was that saturated with armed authority figures. It was not sexy. In any event, it was proof positive that when the city puts its mind to killing a party, it'll do it. And locals will not risk arrest or even confrontation to exert their "right" to party on the streets.

Any thoughts of re-invigorating the Castro Halloween tradition in '08 were quashed when it rained heavily that night. The events of the last two years make it difficult to believe that scores of thousands of San Franciscans will defy police threats to set up some drunken Bacchanalia anywhere in the city. But, if you do, you won't get rained on:

Oct. 31 prediction from Weather.Com

So, if I were forced to make a prediction for tomorrow, I'd say "Cloudy with a chance of limited pissing, public inebriation, and violence."

Graphic | Weather.Com