Claim crowded bar concern led to job loss
A bouncer at an Octagon bar, where four women say they were trampled, says he was sacked after going to police with concerns about overcrowding.
Dunedin resident and former Dunedin Social Club bouncer Blake Perkins said he was fired from the business after reporting overcrowding to police.
He said the night he got into a dispute with the manager about overcrowding, which resulted in him going to police, was around the same time three women were trampled on the dance floor in February.
However, the bar's owner, James Arnott, has disputed the bouncer's version of events, saying it carried out a full investigation, which included going through bar footage and talking to other staff, and found there was no overcrowding.
He also noted police did not take issue with the number of people in the bar when they visited that night.
Last week, three women told the Otago Daily Times they were trampled on the ground in the bar due to the packed dance floor on the Saturday of O Week.
One girl had a golf ball-sized lump on her head, and another had a bruised leg and stomach as a result.
On a night around that time, Mr Perkins was working at the front door of the Dunedin Social Club.
He believed the bar was at full capacity when the manager came over and said "we can fit five more people".
He said by that point, the bar was already about nine or 10 people over its capacity of 215 people inside and 40 people outside.
Mr Perkins said the manager then took his digital counter out of his hands, sent him off the door and told him to go home.
When he was taken off the door, Mr Perkins said he decided he needed to report the overcrowding to police straight away.
"The officer ... walked up to Social, saw it, and asked [the manager] 'how many people are here?' My manager told him 'oh probably 160'," he said.
The officer walked off, and within the next week Mr Perkins was fired and had received a termination letter.
The letter said: "You confirmed that you did leave your post and communicated with the police who were on duty in the Octagon that we were over-capacity".
The letter said Mr Perkins' employment was terminated for "serious misconduct", listing as reasons "deliberate acts of disobedience, negligence or incompetence; refusal to perform normal duties, using abusive or threatening language, and disclosure of confidential information".
Despite using the digital counter, Mr Perkins was accused of miscounting the number of people in the bar.
"I pride myself on doing my job correctly because I've done it for seven years," he said.
Mr Arnott, the founder of Cook Brothers Bars which operates Dunedin Social Club, said Mr Perkins had it wrong.
"We did a full investigation into this, we reviewed camera footage, we got statements from the management team that were working that night and we got statements from other staff members," he said.
On the night, one of the managers said in the incident report they were well under capacity and the bar was "quite empty".
When the manager went outside, he claimed to see a line of "approximately 100 people" waiting to be let in.
Mr Arnott said Mr Perkins was asked to let more people in, but he said his counter said there were 266 people already inside.
"The team inside did a spot check of the areas and they came up with 140 people in the venue, which is way below our capacity."
Mr Arnott said an employee came out and asked Mr Perkins to go inside while he took over the door, which "upset him".
"He went to the police and explained that he thought that the Social Club was over-capacity — the general manager said that at the time the police came in, we had 185 people within the venue and the police were obviously OK with that."
Mr Arnott said a digital counter was "very reliant on the user".
"This has happened multiple times before and we've been working with him to try and upskill him so that he could count correctly."
Mr Perkins was "unfortunately dismissed for this".
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