A night out in Arlington’s Clarendon neighborhood in Northern Virginia used to have a Wild West feel about it, with drunken fights and arrests a regular sight, according to bar owners and local officials.

At the height of the nightlife problems in summer 2015, the Arlington County Police Department struggled to maintain order and respond to emergency calls despite assigning 20 officers to manage a six-block area.

”It was kind of like a constant bar crawl,” said Nadim Kouttab, former general manager of the bar Whitlow’s on Wilson, who worked in Clarendon for 23 years. “It gives a bad impression to anybody that’s in the area when you see four or five police cars parked in front of a restaurant on a Friday or Saturday night at 7-8 o’clock.”

But a new “sheriff” was able to calm things down and promote business growth, all while reducing the police presence. The man behind this culture shift is Dimitrios “Jim” Mastoras, a 20-year veteran of the Arlington County Police Department.

Now Norfolk leadership has turned to Mastoras’s company, Safe Night, to usher in a similar change in the city’s nightlife.

A series of shootings in downtown Norfolk — including a quadruple shooting outside Legacy Restaurant and Lounge in August and a triple homicide outside Chicho’s Backstage in March — prompted the city to ramp up code enforcement on businesses. The city has revoked permits for four bars to date, but that crackdown has led to criticism from many in the restaurant and nightlife industry, who feel they are being unfairly targeted.

The Downtown Norfolk Council in August signed a $120,000 contract with Safe Night to implement a pilot program for its comprehensive nightlife management model called “A Safe Night Out” over the next 12 months.

At a time when trust of police has eroded and departments across Hampton Roads are struggling to recruit, Mastoras describes this model as a proactive approach to building relationships between police, municipal regulatory staff and businesses aimed at addressing the situations that lead to crime. Key to this is getting out of the “us vs. them” mentality between businesses and government, he said.

“Are we going to eliminate violence in entertainment districts and nightlife districts? The answer’s no,” Mastoras said in an interview. “The question is, how do you manage it in a way that doesn’t deplete resources from a public safety standpoint but reduces the severity of these types of incidents?”

What does Safe Night do?

Mastoras and his wife, Molly Mastoras, a licensed professional counselor and social worker in Northern Virginia, founded Safe Night in 2018 to serve as a consultant for local governments looking to reduce crime in nightlife hubs. Their success in Arlington and, more recently, in Dallas caught the eye of Mary Miller, president and CEO of the Downtown Norfolk Council, who, along with the city of Norfolk, had been looking for a new way to manage the city’s nightlife.

“I just felt, with Safe Night, they had experience doing this, they could bring some best practices to the table that we just weren’t aware of,” Miller said.

Safe Night staff came to Norfolk at the beginning of October and conducted more than two dozen interviews with representatives from all the city departments involved in nightlife, as well as representatives from a number of local businesses, among them the popular Irish pub Grace O’Malley’s.

These interviews and ongoing follow-ups will be part of an assessment of the city’s nightlife policies and operations, which Safe Night plans to present by January. Meanwhile, the Downtown Norfolk Council will develop an optional restaurant and bar accreditation model — a way to establish best practices, promote cooperation between businesses and city officials, and provide extra incentives to those who participate.

Ideally, Safe Night wants the accreditation model agreed upon by February before it begins training city officials in April.

“These are very complicated social skills that we’re teaching. A lot of times it’s conflict resolution, active listening even when someone doesn’t want to engage with you — this isn’t easy to do,” said Molly Mastoras. “It’s really building individual relationships for the purpose of collaboration and problem solving.”

Deputy City Manager Pat Roberts believes that Safe Night can help Norfolk’s short-staffed police force by reducing the need for officers to patrol downtown.

“A lot of folks say, ‘keeping us safe is your job. Don’t put this on us.’ That’s not what this is about,” Roberts said. “We’re always going to have a police presence ... but right now we’ve ramped that up to an incredible police presence that’s not sustainable.”

How it worked in Northern Virginia and Dallas, Texas

The bar and restaurant accreditation models Safe Night helped develop in Arlington and Dallas — known as the Arlington Restaurant Initiative and the Copper Star program — have earned significant buy-in.

Forty-six restaurants and six special event venues have earned certification in Arlington. In Dallas, which began working with Safe Night in December, 44 out of 100 of the businesses initially recruited to be a part of the certification program have earned the sticker in their window, said Bryan Tony, project manager for Dallas’ Good Neighbor Initiative, the umbrella organization formed to implement A Safe Night Out’s concepts.

Through participation in the Copper Star program, businesses can be eligible for lower insurance rates. The program also offers $500 micro-grants to participants, spawned regular public meetings and helped some businesses put together employee handbooks for the first time, Tony said.

Dallas police have a dedicated unit for Deep Ellum, the city’s biggest entertainment district, and the fire department will be adding one soon, according to Tony. Meanwhile the city’s code enforcement staff are extending their hours so they can be more responsive to things like noise complaints.

The changes have led city officials to take more ownership of not only the problems but the solutions, said Jim Mastoras, recalling how a police captain went from using the phrase “the problem is” to “our problem is” in reference to nightlife issues.

“We had to stop the training ... it was so jarring for us,” he said. “They were taking ownership of what their issues were in terms of communication and not working together.”

In Arlington, one of the starkest impacts has been a “dramatic” reduction in DUIs as late-night revelers were more efficiently funneled into ride-share vehicles, according to Arlington County Board Chair Katie Cristol. The program has also played a significant role in educating and training service industry staff on ways to reduce sexual assault, she said.

With fewer incidents in the Clarendon nightlife corridor, the police department reduced the number of officers assigned to the six-block strip from 20 officers to eight, Jim Mastoras said.

Apart from in-person, proactive conversations, Clarendon security staff and bar personnel also maintain communications through a WhatsApp messaging group where they can share real-time information about troublemakers or other issues.

“It’s gotten to the point that every security guy on the street knows every cop on the beat. We’re all on a first-name basis, we have phone numbers we can call,” said Patrick Crump, owner of The Renegade in Clarendon.

Norfolk’s new model takes shape

The Downtown Norfolk Council is still in the early stages of putting together the accreditation model, but they have identified several key elements.

Miller primarily wants to see participants employ Department of Criminal Justice Services-certified security, undergo training in de-escalation techniques, have their staff members complete TIPS training on responsible alcohol service and follow the conditions in their conditional use permits. In return for earning accreditation, businesses will receive various perks, which could include grants for putting up security cameras and additional marketing resources.

She sees accreditation as an educational tool for new business owners to show them how they can be successful. Miller also wants the businesses to know who they can call within city government agencies to address problems without any fear of consequences.

“If they’re doing something wrong, I’d rather they frankly fess up and fix it than get caught,” she said.

One thing that makes Norfolk different than the other cities Safe Night has worked with is the prevalence of gun violence in downtown areas. Roberts said the city has been forced to take steps to address these shootings in the short term, but partnering with Safe Night is about addressing the underlying issues that create the “opportunity” for crime.

“If the shootings were to completely stop this minute, my concern is those other things are going to continue,” Roberts said.

The consensus among those with a stake in downtown is that more resources devoted to increasing enforcement alone are not the solution.

“No matter how many police you have on the street there’s going to be a time when the businesses have to start helping as well,” Miller said. “Businesses are all part of our community and all have to play a role in making the community safe. If everybody is doing what they should be, everybody can get lifted up and we can have a much better place.”

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com