Party police

Whatever you do, don't call them bouncers.

They're the people who keep Chicago's nightlife safe, screening the patrons who line up to enter clubs around the city, breaking up fights inside and, if you have too much to drink, making sure you make it into a cab at the end of the night.

But most of the men-and they are almost all men-who work as security guards and managers in the city's clubs think of themselves as conflict mediators first, not bar bouncers whose job it is to eject would-be troublemakers as quickly as possible.

"A bouncer is somebody who will grab somebody and throw them out, and you'll see their body bouncing," said Draper Hugan, the head of security at Bevy in River North. "That's not what we do at our club. It's a really aggressive name, it's for that guy who can bench-press 500 pounds and grab somebody with one arm."

Safety is always an issue for club operators. In March, a deadly shooting at the South Side nightclub Mr. G's Entertainment Center put clubgoers and managers on the alert.

Officials from Mr. G's did not respond to requests for comment on their safety protocol. Managers at other clubs around the city said they have layers of security in place to guard against a stabbing or a shooting, but they still struggle to walk the line between maximizing security and creating a friendly and fun environment for customers.

Hugan, 33, of Park Ridge, stresses that club safety needs to be subtle to be effective. "We have contingency plans for if there's a shooting or a fire, or mace in the building," he said.

Bevy has four to seven security guards in the club whenever it's open, for a ratio of one to every 50 patrons, Hugan said. If it needs to be evacuated, "We open up the exits as quickly as possible," he said. "We have ramps so you can run straight down and come out."

Hugan said Bevy sees one fight between patrons every two months on average, a relatively low rate.

Bevy guards wear suits, instead of the standard black T-shirts that are like a uniform for many nightlife workers, in part to send the message that they don't expect trouble. "We're not aggressive to the point where you can't come up to us and ask us something," he said. "We don't want to come off as attitude-ish."

Many clubs look for security guards who understand conflict resolution practices and know how to defuse a fight before it gets out of hand.

"You don't want to agitate the agitated, so you have to have some charisma and character and tact about what you do" to be a security guard, said Lo Grayson, a manager at the Shrine on South Wabash Avenue. "You're looking for someone who has a presence but also the ability to de-escalate the situation."

Though many club security guards are men, Grayson, 42, of Ravenswood, said he hires women as well because he believes they can more easily approach female patrons who are facing or causing trouble.

The Shrine's guards all go through an online training called Beverage Alcohol Sellers and Servers Education and Training, a course some Illinois bartenders are required to take. Grayson said it helps them do a better job spotting intoxicated visitors and dealing with them.

On a recent evening, Grayson was dressed in a black hoodie with a Shrine logo and cargo pants, and a clip-on microphone. Before the club opened for its weekly Tuesday night performance event, his duties included making sure the exits were lit, bathrooms were clean, sidewalk barriers and ropes were set up, and security personnel were accounted for.

Tuesdays are pretty chill, he said. But on busier nights, door guards at the Shrine pat down visitors as they line up on Wabash Avenue. They check for weapons and screen people who have had too much to drink by looking at visitors' eyes and listening to how they answer the standard question, "When's your birthday?" Sometimes they deny large groups of people from the party buses that roll down the street on weekend nights if the revelers appear drunk.

"I think, because violence is at an all-time high here in Chicago," he said, "we're looking for anything that could cause harm."

Grayson said he trusts the pat-down protocol, but he knows it doesn't totally eliminate the possibility that attacks will take place immediately outside the club.

"Violence that takes place inside of clubs is because of a lack of search," he said. But "things that take place outside, you have very little control of. And it's random, it can happen anywhere at any time."

Chris Fountain, the security manager at Subterranean in West Town, said his first line of defense is the pat-down. Reports of violence at other clubs "scares me," Fountain said. But his No. 1 piece of advice for his security guards is to stay emotionally distant from a fight when they see one.

"I tell them, don't bring yourself into it. Try to break it up and separate both parties so that it doesn't come back to you and it doesn't come back to us," he said. "Some people think working in a nightclub is some kind of glorious thing where they can have fun and work at the same time ... but it's really like a 9-to-5. I want to go in and do the best job I can."

rcromidas@tribune.com