Bar bouncers would have to undergo training if a bill that cleared the Iowa House becomes law. Republican Representative Joe Hutter, a retired cop from Bettendorf, says a bar would lose its liquor license if bouncers aren’t trained properly. “Anger management training and the proper training for security personnel at liquor establishments should be required,” Hutter says. The bill was inspired by the death of Charles Lovelady, a Des Moines man who was strangled by a couple of bar bouncers who were applying a choke-hold. Representative Wayne Ford, a democrat from Des Moines, says Lovelady died five years ago this February. “One thing his family said to me is ‘Representative Ford, please don’t let his death be in vain,'” Ford says. “This is a perfect example of what we can do, working together.” Ford says there’s interest in the bill in states where similar tragedies have occured. “When these things happen, there are very big men lying or locked up on a small man and I weigh 320 pounds and if I put my weight on a man for a long period of time, with my hands around his head, I might not know I was slowly killing him,” Ford says. “If I was trained to know how to use my weight, if I was trained to know how to go and talk to people instead of just using my size, some of these people might be alive today.” The bill, which won approval in the House last year but stalled in the Senate, must pass the Senate and be signed by Governor Vilsack before it becomes law.
