In response to the problems caused by Bonfire, the country-and-western bar that opened in the Old Port late last summer, the Portland Police Department may take a step that the public will find shocking: assigning officers to patrol Wharf Street.

It’s hardly surprising that the cops would want to have a presence in the heart of the city’s nightlife district, especially when all the bars and clubs close for the night and drunken patrons spill out onto the street to mingle, fight, puke and pee on the paving stones. What’s hard to believe is that the department has, in recent years, assigned exactly zero officers to patrol Wharf Street between Labor Day and Memorial Day. Instead, officers sit in their warm cars blocking a largely deserted block of Fore Street to traffic before and after last call.

Even some Old Port bar owners were dismayed to hear this when Commander Gary Rogers acknowledged the situation during the March 11 meeting of the city’s Nightlife Oversight Committee (NLOC). In response to a follow-up question about police coverage in the Old Port, Cmdr. Rogers, who’s the third-highest-ranking officer in the PPD, said that “for security reasons” the department does not disclose that information, but added, “we do have a handful of officers that police [the Old Port] and we do have more officers policing down there after Memorial Day weekend …. It certainly gets a lot busier when the weather changes. This time of year, this is the quiet time — we don’t have the issues.”

To which Sarah Martin, co-owner of The Bar of Chocolate Café, interjected, “We have a lot of issues right now.”

Martin and her partner, Tim McNamara, are among a group of seven Wharf Street business owners that has formally requested a police presence on Wharf Street year-round due to the mayhem caused by Bonfire patrons and employees. (The other members include the proprietors of Street and Co., Central Provisions, Buck’s Naked BBQ, Ollo Hair Salon and the recently closed Merry Table, as well as Old Port property owners Cyrus Hagge and the company East Brown Cow.)

“Incidents of people vomiting, falling down and urinating in the immediate vicinity of [Bonfire] … are commonplace every weekend and at an all-time high,” McNamara told the committee. “We have never seen the amount of people throwing up on Wharf Street as we have in the last three months, and we’ve been there for 10 years.”

Bonfire owner Tanner Herget, who also owns the nightclub 51 Wharf a few doors down the street, was at this NLOC meeting, but for the first time in years he was not the chairman. (Portland’s Downtown District, which hosts and sponsors the meetings, recently determined that the chair must be a member of the District’s board.) Herget said Bonfire is “very well overstaffed” and trained to handle problem customers, and “we do ask patrons to leave quite often.”

The source of the problems, however, is not Bonfire, Herget said, but other bars, which he did not name, that serve “cheap” drinks. “A lot of times people will go to some place that’s very inexpensive … and then come to Bonfire, and either we don’t let them in the front door or we ask them to leave after a beverage,” he said. “With the dollar shots going around town it’s easy to take two or three or whatever it might be and walk down to our establishment. You’re fine. And then we ask them to leave soon after.”

Herget somehow managed to say this with a straight face. As I noted in The Bollard this month, Bonfire sells shots of whiskey for a dollar during happy hour every night, and routinely pours free shots of whiskey before closing time.

Alan Incorvaia, an executive with the company that runs the Portland Harbor Hotel, echoed McNamara and Martin’s concerns at the meeting. “People coming in to urinate in our parking garage and vomit — we need a full-time security guard at night just to keep them out,” he said. “I mean, you can smell it — that’s how bad it gets.”

Incorvaia said he’s previously witnessed the action on Wharf Street from one of his hotel’s rooms. “I couldn’t believe what I would watch,” he said. “All night long, the fights. It’s entertaining to someone like me, but not too funny to some of our guests.”

The long meeting adjourned with no conclusion other than a general plea for business owners to work together. But outside, at least some justice was being done. When I returned to my car on Oak Street, it was blocked by a wrecker hauling away a black pickup illegally parked in a tow-away zone. The name on the New Hampshire vanity plate read: HERGET.