Even if Arlington is sacrificing its reputation as an urbanist’s dream community, its leaders have not given up their mission to clean up its residents sometimes-naughty antics. The code change adopted during Saturday’s board meeting came after the Arlington Police Department reported making 664 arrests for public inebriation and foul-mouthed talk in 2014.
Officials did not specify how many of those arrests were of people running their mouths, but Arlington has been concerned with public displays of lewdness for a while. Arlington, once a frequent site of organized bar crawls, cracked down on the festivities last year after several events ended in brawls, public urination, and at least one instance of a man taking off all his clothes and jumping into a car to flee police. (He didn’t make it very far.)
The revised regulation replaces the word “drunkenness” with “intoxication” to include people who appear to be affected by substances other than alcohol.
