NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) – This week a firm called Safe Night has been working with Norfolk city leaders and businesses to find ways to keep the danger down.
The firm has essentially given the city a template on safety. The details are still being fleshed out, but it’s all part of a new campaign coming to the city.
“Gold Bar Norfolk-Raising the bar for Norfolk nightlife” will be the city’s new safety campaign. Downtown Norfolk Council is launching it in partnership with the Safe Night firm.
The firm spent the bulk of the week meeting with Norfolk city leaders and business owners to create a standardized safety plan for Norfolk’s downtown. That plan starts with every bar, venue and restaurant employee going through an online training.
“It focuses on public safety expectations, protecting a crime scene, when to get public safety involved, intervention, sexual assault intervention techniques,” said Safe Night co-founder Dimitrios Mastoras. “There’s a lot to it that the city just doesn’t require through the CUP process or local ordinance.”
Bars and restaurants that have all employees trained will then be eligible for a “gold bar” accreditation.
“They have to write policies, they have to be reviewed, they have to have a physical verification and operational checklist,” Mastoras said. “Staff are going to have to go verify. It’s not enough to just say you did it. Then they have to go through the training to reinforce it.
“Ultimately it puts the business in a way to show look, if we have something bad happen in our establishment, we’ve done everything possible.”
Mastoras is a retired Arlington Master Police Officer. He and his wife Molly, who also runs the program, listed their suggestions to Norfolk city leaders and business owners, like encouraging businesses to call police if there is a problem, to train police officers to interact with nightlife staff when on patrol and encourage bar and restaurant staff to de-escalate problems that may arise.
Mastoras told 10 On Your Side the program can only work if the community has trust in public safety and public safety has trust in downtown businesses.
“This is not a flash in the pan,” Mastoras said. “We have not tricked anybody into thinking this is going to be an easy turnaround or an easy program to implement. It is hard. It takes a lot of commitment and time.”
The purpose of the Safe Night program is to manage harm, not solve it. Mastoras said it could take three years to truly notice a change in safety downtown.
“They’re still figuring out exactly what it is that everyone in Norfolk wants,” Molly Mastoras said, “so we kind of provide a template, but we want this to be Norfolk’s. It has to come from here.”
