‘Mellow’ Halloween weekend in SLO still has its boozy scares

“Hey, it’s Lt. Proll!” a woman dressed in a risqué nurse costume shouted to us outside Buffalo Pub & Grill on Saturday as people celebrated Halloween a few nights early.

“I’ve gotten to know a few people working downtown,” Lt. Bill Proll cracked.

On Saturday night, I saw Halloween weekend from a new point of view: riding shotgun with a San Luis Obispo Police Department veteran of more than 30 years. For five hours late Saturday and into Sunday, we jockeyed between Higuera Street downtown and infamous house party routes like Hathway Avenue, all the while keeping an eye on the fun — and hopefully safe — revelry.

We started downtown about 9 p.m., as costumed young men and women slowly began trickling in. The crowds were relatively thin at the time, but they were still lively. And friendly. The shoutouts, and walk-up handshakes, would be a recurring theme throughout the night.

Before 10 p.m., the party-famous streets flanking Cal Poly were calm, but a buzz was brewing. Large charter buses lined the street next to Campus Bottle, likely to take fraternity and sorority members to private parties in other parts of town.

“That’s good, in a way, for us,” Proll said. “Of course, that does mean they’ll be back later tonight.”

Proll conceded that much of officers’ time is tied up in dealing with students. Throughout Saturday night, there was a steady stream of service calls to Cal Poly, almost all of them for suspected alcohol poisoning. Off campus, SLO police reported Sunday that 36 parties had taken place overnight.

On more than one occasion, our mere presence in front of a house party (for about two minutes, tops) was enough to send outdoor revelers inside and to send blaring music from a 10 to a 4.

“Cop! Cop!” one woman whisper-shouted. “Everyone back inside.”

Proll, though, has a special connection to Cal Poly students: He used to be one. The Danville native attended the school from 1981 to 1986, earning a political science degree. When he’s not on duty, he’s teaching physical education classes on campus, he said.

As the clock hit 10:30 p.m., we were back downtown, and the pace had picked up. Long lines formed outside Marston’s Bar & Grill, Frog & Peach Pub, Novo Restaurant & Lounge, Mother’s Tavern and other bars. A call came in for an incident two miles away on McCollum Street: “Code 3. Medical. Unresponsive.” Suspected alcohol poisoning.

On the way there, our attention turned back to Cal Poly as Proll asked me whether I had ever heard of Carson Starkey.

Just about everyone in SLO County knows the name Carson Starkey. The 18-year-old Cal Poly freshman died in December 2008 from alcohol poisoning during a hazing incident. Starkey’s fraternity buddies reportedly began to drive him to the hospital, but, fearing they would get in trouble for their roles in the dangerous drinking, opted to drive him back to the house and let him sleep it off. Starkey never woke up; his blood alcohol content was 0.40, five times the legal limit.

Proll remembers driving Starkey’s parents to the morgue so they could identify their son. It’s a moment he’ll never forget.

Starkey’s death spawned a call to action, and his parents started the “Aware Awake Alive” campaign that was later adopted on all 23 California State University campuses.

When we arrived on scene to one suspected alcohol poisoning case Saturday night, we found a young man in a sailor costume lying unconscious on the sidewalk. Firefighters and paramedics arrived immediately after. They were able to wake the young man up, but he obviously was still in bad shape. They loaded him onto a stretcher and taxied him to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center. He was responding, albeit barely.

Three women who were walking along the street had called 911 after stumbling upon the man’s seemingly lifeless body.

“He’s probably a super nice kid,” Proll said. “He just had too much to drink, unfortunately.”

On a bright note, Proll said there has been some positive change as of late. In recent years, more people are opting to call 911 when it comes to possible alcohol poisoning instead of letting their friends “sleep it off,” he said.

Back downtown about an hour later, there was a report from Mother’s Tavern that one man had punched another during a scuffle. Both men were detained, but the man who was punched didn’t want to press charges, so everyone was free to go. We witnessed one man stumbling along Higuera Street in what looked to be camouflage pajamas. His friends eventually corralled him and coaxed him to walk normally, his bare rear-end was exposed for all to see as he walked out of sight.

Overall, Proll and other officers described Saturday night as a “mellow” one around SLO. There were hordes of people both at house parties and at bars downtown, as per usual, but no major brawls or violent incidents. Even passers-by offered polite hellos to our police vehicle: “Hey, there’s our Uber,” one man joked.

Things were quiet for a while. Until 1 a.m., when we stopped at the intersection of Marsh and Nipomo streets. As the light turned green, a driver in a new Lexus coming from the opposite direction turned left in front of us — the wrong way down Marsh.

“Oh, no, no no,” Proll sighed.

The driver, dressed in a court jester’s costume, pulled over before we even turned on our flashing red-and-blue lights.

After the standard formalities — license and registration — another officer who also arrived on scene suspected the driver had been drinking. The man climbed out of his car and submitted to about 15 minutes worth of field sobriety tests. Follow the pen. Walk the straight line. The whole nine.

Officers then pulled out a Breathalyzer. The man blew a 0.07, a notch below the legal limit of impairment in California.

The mellow mood must have been contagious this night, however, because they gave the jester a break. An officer climbed into the man’s car, made a U-turn and parked it across Marsh. He told the driver to come back and get his car in the morning. The driver, extremely relieved and grateful, shook everyone’s hand and announced he would walk down the street and get a hotel room for the night.

Before 2 a.m., we swung by Mother’s Tavern for one last reported fight. We watched as officers loaded a handcuffed man into the back of their vehicle.

Proll dropped me off at my car a few minutes later. I thanked him and drove off. Not far away, I came across a lone man dressed in a yellow Teletubbies costume sauntering festively along South Higuera Street. A good chuckle to end an interesting night.

This story was originally published October 30, 2016 at 9:08 PM with the headline "‘Mellow’ Halloween weekend in SLO still has its boozy scares."