SantaCon 2016: Zero Arrests, 100 Summonses for Disorderly Conduct, Police Say

MANHATTAN, NY — Arrests at the city's annual SantaCon bar crawl, held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, were back down to zero this year after hitting a count of five in 2015, according to the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

Just like last year, though, police said around 100 "summonses" were issued to people dressed like Santa Clause for offenses falling into the "disorderly conduct" category — including peeing in public, being overly drunk in public and drinking on the street. Any Santas who received a summons, aka an NYPD ticket, will have to appear in court and will probably end up paying a fine, police said.

By Monday morning, we hadn't seen any particularly disturbing videos surface of Santas brawling, pissing, barfing, sexing, etc. on Saturday. (That's not to say none of these things happened, though. Got any pics or stories to share? Reach out: simone.wilson@patch.com.)

The only event footage of note, in fact, showed two SantaCon protesters — of the hundreds promised by protest organizers — telling a crowd of Santas to go back to Jersey outside the bar crawl's starting point at the Flatiron Building.

The two men — one a self-proclaimed Democrat and the other a self-proclaimed Republican in a "Make America Great Again" hat, not unlike the ones Gothamist spotted on some Santas — were detained at the scene after using a megaphone without a permit.

"We don't come together on a lot of things, but we do have one common cause that we agree on," one of the protesters said into his megaphone. "We both hate SantaCon."

(SantaCon organizers also used megaphones, but they had an NYPD permit to do so.)

Because the two protesters were taken into police custody Saturday morning, they weren't around to heckle Santas in line outside Bar 13 in the East Village at noon, as planned.

Around 23,000 people are believed to have attended this year's SantaCon, an anonymous organizer told Patch — a few thousand more than last year. Asked why he thought the number of arrests went down in 2016, the organizer said: "Our theory is last year more people were outside because it was so warm."

But again, we'd love to hear more from readers about what went down Saturday as the Santas frolicked and stumbled and somersaulted through Midtown and Downtown Manhattan. That's simone.wilson@patch.com.

Lead photo by Marc Torrence/Patch