Newport residents showed up to address the board of commissioners after an incident occurred outside Jerry’s Jug House on Sunday, Feb. 25, that they said led to a sleepless night and an arrest. The bar was closed at the time of the incident.
Jerry’s Jug House is located at 414 E 7th St. in Newport and is surrounded by homes. Two Newport residents say that on Sunday evening after the bar closed, a group of drunk bikers were causing a scene outside, and when neighbors asked them to be quiet, they started trying to pick a fight—even scaling someone’s home.
Newport resident Barry Churbock lives around the corner from the bar and was one person who showed up Monday night to file a complaint. Churbock said he moved into his home in 2017, and the noise continues to escalate—though the city’s police run logs indicate only two incidents reported at the establishment between Aug. 31, 2022, and Feb. 26, 2024.
“The noise that’s coming out of this place is excessive, it really needs to stop,” Churbock said. “There are a lot of people out on the streets late at night. They’re partying on Overton Street, so I hear them at 1-2 o’clock leaving. But the noise coming out of there is really, really excessive.”
Sunday’s situation turned more extreme than noise complaints, according to the bar’s neighbors.
Another Newport resident, Vince Proffitt, who lives nearby, played a recording of the bikers during the meeting he took Sunday night. Proffitt described the group as “looking to fight anybody they came across.”
Proffitt is a candidate for the Newport Board of Commissioners.
In the recording, screaming, cursing and engine revving can be heard—it was not discerned if neighbors were also participating in the yelling and cursing.
“I had to end the taping when I had to call 911 when one of the bikers was trying to fight my neighbor Mike, who came out on his balcony and asked them to quiet down,” Proffitt said. “That was it. The response was one of the bikers scaling his house to try and get up to his second-floor balcony to try and fight him.”
Proffitt said the bikers eventually left, and roughly five minutes later, a police cruiser came down the street, but he said it never stopped to speak with anyone. Then, roughly five minutes later, one of the bikers returned, and Proffitt called the police a second time.
When the biker tried to leave again, Proffitt said he couldn’t get his bike started. The police responded again, and the man was arrested.
“Now, since they hadn’t seen anything, he was arrested for public intoxication, so trying to attack my neighbor, scaling up trying to get into his house—all it came down to was a misdemeanor, and he was out before we had breakfast this morning,” Proffitt said.
He said this was not a one-time thing, and it has been an ongoing issue; however, Jerry’s Jug House Attorney Aaron Sutherland said this was an isolated incident from people who don’t normally hang out at the bar.
According to the calls for service as logged by Newport Police, Jerry’s Jug House has received one disturbance call (the Sunday, Feb. 25 incident) and one disorderly juvenile call (May 14, 2023) at the bar between Aug. 31, 2022, and Feb. 26, 2024.
“There was an incident where there was a former bartender with prior ownership, and he passed away, unfortunately, and some of his friends came out to visit to honor his life,” Sutherland said. “And so, these guys, these are people that don’t regularly hang out there and they were disruptive.”
Sutherland is also a candidate for the Newport Board of Commissioners.
Sutherland said the bar has worked with the city on noise complaints by limiting their hours.
“It is not a biker bar,” Sutherland said. “What happened last night was unacceptable. They’re going to do everything in their power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Further, Sutherland said ownership is planning to get with Newport Police Chief Chris Fangman to determine a plan if something similar should happen again.
Newport City Manager Tom Fromme said the city would look into the complaints. He said the city made significant changes roughly two years ago to the way they track problems for every business with an alcohol license by having Newport Assistant City Manager John Hayden go through the police calls made to those businesses every week.
“I’m surprised it didn’t hit my radar that it’s been an issue,” Fromme said.
If there is an issue, he said to call the police because that’s how they track the complaints.
“So, when John Hayden is looking at this on a daily basis, if we’ve got zero calls that come in, then we don’t have a record for it,” Fromme said.
Newport Commissioner Mike Radwanski said during the meeting not to be a hero and always call the police.
“The thing I want to add, folks, is don’t be a hero,” he said. “Don’t be a hero. If you see something, you call it in. Don’t record it. Don’t get into an altercation. You call it in and stay in your house.”
