Wrigleyville Police Commander Wants "Zero Tolerance" Policy To "Contain The Idiots"

By Amy Cavanaugh in News on Jan 6, 2013 7:00PM

Madness ensues in Wrigleyville each time there's an event at the Field, an organized bar crawl, or the calendar says Saturday—and now officials are vowing to do something about it.

DNAInfo.com spoke with Elias Voulgaris, commander of the Town Hall Police District, who started the job in late August. The first major event held after he started was the Twelve Bars of Christmas, during which a man stabbed another man in the neck with a broken bottle, Chicago Comics' window was shattered, and thousands of more people attended than organizers had said.

"Ultimate accountability is on me," he said.

Voulgaris' vision: Have more police visibility surrounding bars for big events like Cubs games, concerts like the fall Bruce Springsteen show at Wrigley Field and pub crawls like TBOX and the upcoming Festa Parties Mardi Gras-themed crawl, BeadQuest, on Feb. 16.

And to separate partygoers from neighborhood residents, he wants to impose "zero tolerance" for things like limos hanging out in alleys during concerts, peeing on sidewalks, drinking in public, aggressive panhandling—any quality of life issues are fair game.

Voulgaris isn't the only one vowing to do something about the neighborhood. Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) said he'll introduce an ordinance to regulate pub crawls.

"It's kind of new territory," Tunney said... "We're looking at potential regulation of what one would call pub crawls. We want to get a handle on how do we regulate the size, the hours of operation and such."