well good morning everybody and happy St Patrick's week I'm here on behalf of the M Police Department to talk about uh upcoming festivities here tomorrow Saturday and certainly actually St Patrick's Day which is which is next week uh we've got augmented patrols just like we have in the past there'll be extra officers out both on foot you'll see the mounted unit out here and officers patrolling in cars and we're going to be watching all our entertainment districts not just uh down here on Water Street but we've got a deployment on North Avenue Milwaukee Street up on Brady Street Third Street as well over the past couple years we've had the opportunity through our responsible entertainment deployment to really partner with uh the bars and the taverns in our entertainment districts and this is going to continue and it will pay dividends for us here over these next couple weekends uh we look at Best Practices with them and they are going to watch uh not only with their doormen but their bartenders some of the over serving issues uh what this all does eventually come down to is some personal responsibility and that's what we would be asking for people we we want you to come out we want you to enjoy these great entertainment districts and the opportunities that our city has but you know it gets back to what we've heard in the past friends don't let friends drive drunk it comes down to somebody's decision and if you want to come down here and and get intoxicated to the point where you you don't know who or where you are that's your right to do that but have have somebody along with you that's responsible for you and if we get to that point in our city you know everybody will be able to come down here enjoy things a lot easier a lot better it was 76 degrees last year and we don't have that this year so that may that may play into it plus we have St Patrick's STS on a Sunday so we've got Saturday night we've got to prepare for and Sunday as well but you know what you have to look at this too there were just thousands of people out here last year very few incidents came from that it was a great time downtown my officers that worked on entertainment districts we get it and we're not here to write tickets we're here to just remind people we want everybody to come down and have a uh a great time so if I see somebody with an open intoxicant we're going to remind them of that and have them go back into the bar before we we start writing tickets and make arrests we're going to keep every street open as long as as possible if it gets to a point where for safety reasons we close the street we will but those decisions are made uh right at that moment you know when we add extra officers that that equals money uh and it's very weather dependent so they're talking about rain over the weekend so I'll be able to release officers sooner which saves us some money well we're very cognizant of that cuz that's all our money that's my tax money as well yeah you know we have it's and tragically we had Mr HEC last year uh we are going to we've got patrols along the river walk and the organizer for the bar crawl is going to be patrolling the bridge Bridges as well Mr Willcox is still missing and if anybody has information uh just let us know we'll follow up on every lead but what what I would ask everybody if you if if you're down here on Water Street if you're down on North Avenue and Brady Street and your intention is to get out and get just intoxicated and that is your god-given right to do uh have somebody with you that's responsible for you and your actions if we can get to that point things will be just much better for all of us here [Music]