Providence police officers survey the early morning crowd in the section of the city that has become popular with youthful partygoers. As patrons spill out of the clubs, the officers’ objective is to keep them moving out of the area.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE

Patrolman John Costa bangs his metal baton against a metal light pole, making an awful clanging sound.

Thousands of people are pouring out of the bars and nightclubs downtown and in the adjacent Jewelry District. The epicenter of activity is Richmond and Friendship streets, where some of the more popular nightspots are clustered.

“Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go,” bellows Patrolman Greg Daniels. “Out of the street.” He swings the beam of his flashlight back and forth over the crowd.

Patrolman William Hutchinson walks his big chestnut horse Little Joe sideways down the sidewalk, pushing people ahead of him.

It’s about 2:15 a.m. on a recent Sunday. An eight-member police patrol, known as the roving detail, and specially assigned on overtime, has teamed up with regular on-duty officers to head off violence and other problems associated with the nightlife that the city has encouraged to help make itself a destination for visitors.

IN KEEPING the lights on later downtown, the city is attracting fun seekers from Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as the rest of Rhode Island. They are a young crowd, including 18- to 21-year-olds who are allowed into some nightspots although those under 21 cannot legally drink alcohol. They get drinks nevertheless and cause a disproportionate amount of the trouble, according to the police.

Over the years, city officials have taken a number of steps to fasten their grip on the situation, and additional measures are in the works.

Legislation proposed by the city is under consideration in the General Assembly that would allow certain nightspots to remain open one hour longer Thursday nights through Sunday nights before legal holidays so as to bring the crowds out at a more manageable pace. Two other bills would increase the penalties for underage drinkers and those who serve them. All three proposals would apply statewide.

Two weeks ago the city amended its drinking-in-public ordinance to increase the penalties, and officials are moving to license bar and nightclub bouncers in the hope of reducing bouncer-related violence.

It is a sometimes volatile mix of residential, commercial and entertainment uses that the city seeks to manage in its gradually developing revival of the old downtown Business District and the Jewelry District.

“When I came on [the police force] in the late ’70s, it was quiet. … Downtown was dead,” recalled Maj. Paul C. Fitzgerald, commander of the Uniformed Division.

Now the equivalent of an entire town arrives in the area on the extended weekends. On a busy night, the police say, 8,500-plus fun seekers— representing the maximum legal occupancies of about 40 bars, nightclubs and the restaurants that morph into nightclubs in the late night — become the responsibility of the police.

Lt. Michael Figueiredo, commander of the downtown police district, likens the scene to Mardi Gras.

THE PARTY abruptly ends at bar-closing time at 2 a.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays before legal holidays. And the municipal hangover begins right away: Traffic jams, noise, littering, public urination and violence. Some of the fun seekers have been drinking in limousines and party buses even before they arrive and they have trouble getting back to their rides.

Five of the 13 murders in the city in 2008, as well as numerous nonfatal shootings and stabbings, the police have said, were associated directly or indirectly with nightclubbing citywide.

Level II, a dance club at Richmond and Friendship, has been one of the popular draws in recent years. It is the subject of a protracted hearing at City Hall in which the police are trying to persuade the Board of Licenses to declare the club a “disorderly house” under state law and to take away its liquor license.

“It’s the worst” lawbreaker of the bars and clubs, said Fitzgerald. “That’s why we’re trying to close it.”

Level II’s lawyer, state Rep. John DeSimone, D-Providence, has asked board members to carefully scrutinize the police evidence. “It seems that they’re being singled out,” he said of his clients. “For what, I have no idea.”

“Some of the problems are that they don’t play by the rules,” Fitzgerald said of certain establishments that preoccupy the police. “Some clubs always try to get over, to overcrowd, by a lot. The underage drinking is a huge problem. … It’s so big and so dark and so noisy that it is tough to go inside and make arrests.

“Some of them, they’re always trying to make more money, make more, make more.”

FOR THE ROVING police detail on that recent Sunday, the night began 3½ hours earlier, when they mustered in the “Fishbowl,” a substation across Weybosset Street from the Providence Performing Arts Center so nicknamed for its many windows. There was a full moon and some speculated about what that might portend.

The nightly presence of the roving detail on Thursdays through certain pre-holiday Sundays augments the regular six-member police shift downtown and in the Jewelry District as well as about 20 officers who are working private-duty standing details outside many of the nightspots.

Clots of people are hanging around after closing time. Now that they are outside the din of the bars and nightclubs, they are better able to talk. Better able to exchange cell phone numbers or to chat about where their favorite deejay will appear next.

Two men slap hands in a parking lot. “Hey, where you goin’,” one inquires of the other. They discuss a house party that might be going on somewhere in Providence.

But the police are having none of it. City officials don’t want the clubgoers loitering because they require so much expensive police attention, because trouble might erupt and because the clamor might disturb the apartment and condominium dwellers who have pioneered a residential neighborhood in the vicinity.

Cars try to inch their way through the crowds, their tires crunching empty cans of Red Bull. One bar patron carries a plastic cup with beer in it. Noticing an officer, he guiltily empties it into the street.

Suddenly, officers sprint down the block to break up a fight. Right behind them are Patrolman Costa and his dog Bruno, who is barking.

“It’s like a powder keg waiting to go off,” Fitzgerald said at a State House hearing on one of the club-related bills. “You never know.”A SAFER NIGHTLIFE

The City of Providence and downtown special interest groups have been pressing for changes in the laws to better control late-night weekend activities.

•Allow certain bars and nightclubs to stay open one hour later on Thursday, Friday,

Saturday and pre-holiday Sunday nights

•Stiffen penalties for underage drinkers

•Stiffen penalties for those who provide

alcohol to underage drinkers

•License bouncers

•Stiffen penalties for drinking in public.

(Enacted two weeks ago.)

gsmith@projo.com