The San Luis Obispo Police Department is asking the City Council to change its safety enhancement zone ordinance.
The ordinance dates back to 2004 and was in response to Mardi Gras celebrations that got out of hand.
With San Luis Obispo being a college town, now the enhancement zone is used mostly to help keep student gatherings under control.
Last March, thousands of students gathered on Hathway Street in San Luis Obispo stretching from the Campus Bottle store to the Cal Poly Campus.
To keep these types of gatherings under control, fines for things like property damage, public intoxication, and noise violations are doubled within city limits. The problem is, that most recent gathering on Hathway wasn't on St. Patrick's Day, one of the designated safety enhancement zone days – but the weekend before on the student-created "St. Frattys" Day.
In 2015, a large gathering on St. Fratty's Day resulted in a garage roof collapse and several injuries at a house in San Luis Obispo. First responders had trouble getting to the scene because of the large crowd.
San Luis Obispo Deputy Chief of Police, Fred Mickel says they are now asking the city council to expand the safety enhancement zones to include several weekends around St. Patrick's Day and Halloween.
"What we're looking to do is we're trying to increase safety. That's all this is about. We're not trying to take away the ability to go have fun and have a party and do these things. It's just what comes along with that. When you have like this last year during St Fratty's Day, which is an unsanctioned event that happens in our city, we had thousands of students in the street and we couldn't get medical services into that crowd appropriately," said Chief Mickel.
The City Council will consider the request to expand the time frame of the safety enhancement zone during next week's meeting.
