Robert Ehlich of Johnston, left, listens to Robert C. Smith, above, a police detective from San Diego who moolights as a consultant, who trained Ehlich and about 80 other bouncers from Providence bars and nightclubs in how to handle their jobs with sophistication and fewer fisticuffs.

The Providence Journal Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — In the 1989 action movie Road House, itinerant bouncer James Dalton arrives in a small Missouri town with three simple rules for handling confrontations in a bar:

•Never underestimate your opponent and expect the unexpected.

•Take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary.

•Be nice.

Those cinematic rules of the road, it turns out, have real-life application.

Or so says Robert C. Smith, 45, a San Diego police detective who moonlights as a consultant specializing in alcohol-related training for the hospitality industry. On Friday, Smith stood in front of a skeptical crowd of about 40 bouncers and bar managers — some of them were yawning from their shift the night before — in a conference room of the Radisson hotel near India Point.

He was there at the behest of city officials to conduct a multifaceted training seminar as a first step in the implementation of a new ordinance that requires bouncers to be screened, trained and licensed. Among the topics covered were the liability problems of bouncers and their employers, recognizing fake IDs and making a citizen’s arrest.

Obedience to “Dalton’s Rules” from Road House, as pronounced by the strong and sinewy star of the movie, the late Patrick Swayze, are a good idea for bouncers or doormen, who are tasked with keeping the peace and protecting property, Smith said. To help make his point, he projected a clip of the movie onto a screen.

“You’re the cops of the club,” he said.

The licensing is part of a civic campaign to enhance Providence as a safe and appealing destination for visitors. It also fulfills a police ambition to reduce the number of bloody incidents by having bouncers employ more politesse and fewer fisticuffs.

The ordinance calls bouncers “floor hosts,” to reflect the respectability that is expected to come with professionalism.

Smith was instrumental in California’s adoption last week of a law requiring job-specific training of bouncers that takes effect in January. Providence, according to Smith, is the first jurisdiction in the nation to mandate job-specific training for bouncers, who he calls in-house security guards. There are places that require training of security guards, but he said those allow for generic education that has little relevance to bouncers.

To paraphrase Smith Friday, in this era of finely tuned tort law, a bouncer with a bad attitude is just as passé in the bar business as happy hour and the ladies entrance. And Providence bouncers have a fresh example of what can go wrong.

David T. Howard, 22, a Brown University football player who has worked as a bouncer at the Fish Company bar, recently was convicted of simple assault on an allegedly drunken customer who resisted eviction. District Court Judge Madeline Quirk concluded after a trial that he punched and kicked the customer.

The Fish Company had its liquor license suspended for three days as a result of the April incident. And Howard’s lawyer said he expects the bar to be sued.

Howard, who is appealing his conviction to Superior Court, testified that he received no formal instruction from his employer before he began work as a bouncer and that he learned on the job.

While on the witness stand, Howard said of rowdy customers, “You have to use force to get them out of the building.”

That is true, sometimes, said Smith. He offered tips to his listeners on ways to smoothly get unwanted customers outside, where they can be dealt with more easily. One sure way, he suggested, is to tell a troublemaker that there is a good-looking woman outside who is asking for him.

Vivid and vulgar in his 5½-hour presentation, which relied on a freewheeling PowerPoint lecture and a bit of role-playing, Smith drew heavily on his experiences working as a bouncer and doorman in bars from Guam to Norfolk, Va., as well as a police officer.

To demonstrate particular do’s and don’ts, he screened video of several incidents of nightclub violence elsewhere, including one so graphic that when a bouncer sent a hapless customer reeling with a blow from the butt end of his flashlight, even the gruffest-looking bouncers in the audience went, “Oooooh.”

Situations are not personal, even if a drunken customer curses you, pushes you or takes a swing at you, Smith said, in effect borrowing still another of Dalton’s Rules from the movie. Treat those offenses as a business challenge, he advised, not a test of your manhood.

Smith recommended that everyone who looks younger than 30 be carded at the door in order to ensure that no minors slip inside. An assertion that “we check everyone” is not likely to be believed in court, he contended.

Smith said he would be going out Friday night to patronize a couple of the bars whose employees attended his seminar. His favorite drink, he confided, is Patrón tequila on the rocks with lime and salt.

His listeners had warmed to his message by that point in the presentation.

One man called out, “Better have your ID.”

gsmith@projo.com