MUSCLE BREACH: Bouncers are big, undertrained, underpaid, prone to violence ...and potentially lethal

IT STARTED as a problem with the bill.

"Your credit card doesn't work," the beefy bartender barked at Jim Bruno, a kid from the suburbs who'd come to the Field House bar in Center City for a Halloween party.

No problem, Dean Bowser thought, as he headed to Bruno's side to bail out his buddy. Bowser reached to retrieve his friend's credit card and offer his own - and that's when everything went wrong.

The bartender, believing that Bowser was throwing a punch at him, leaped over the bar and toppled Bowser to the floor. Bouncers swarmed him from behind. Bowser, confused by the sudden chaos, didn't know then that they were bouncers.

Within seconds, he was off his feet and being rushed toward the door. A bouncer hurled him through the bar's glass-and-wood doors with such force that one of his sneakers flew off his foot into the street.

Sprawled on the sidewalk, he felt his arm tingling. Horror overtook confusion when he glanced down.

"There was a huge chunk just gone. Blood was pouring out. I thought I was losing my arm," said Bowser, whose forearm had been flayed open from the underside of his elbow halfway to his wrist.

Dizzy, he sagged against a parked car.

"Get off the car!" a bouncer shouted. It was the first time, he said, since he reached for his wallet, that any bar employee had said anything to him.

In the booze business, anyone can be a bouncer, at least in Pennsylvania. Getting a job as a bar doorman is no more complicated or regulated than landing a job at a Wawa.

But, unlike bouncers, Wawa clerks aren't likely to send you to the hospital with a nearly severed arm - or kill you. Two bouncers at a Southwest Philadelphia strip club are awaiting trial for their roles in a 2009 beating that left a customer from Delaware County dead.

"Bars hire guys who just look big and buff, rather than people with a personality, people who can handle themselves by communicating rather than immediately getting physical," said Bowser, 25, of Chalfont, Bucks County, whose 2008 brush with Field House bouncers left him with a jagged scar and a reluctance to revisit Philadelphia's social scene.

They don't get paid very much money, either.

While pay can vary depending on how classy a club is, bouncers typically make about $30,000 a year in Philadelphia, according to salaryexpert.com.

But some states, recognizing the powder keg that alcohol, groups of male strangers and low-paid burly bouncers can create, have beefed up screening and training requirements for bouncers.

The issue has gotten little attention here, despite headline-grabbing incidents such as the strip-club death.

International studies show the need for increased regulation. A 2010 government study in Australia, for example, found that bouncers are responsible for one in eight assaults in pubs and clubs. And in more than two thirds of violent incidents involving bar bouncers in Toronto, Canada, the bouncers either enhanced the likelihood of violence or downright caused it through gratuitous aggression, harassment of patrons and provocative behavior, according to a 1998 study in the Journal of Drug Issues.

Some bouncers also rely on steroids to build muscles, experts say. But steroids can increase aggression, loosen users' impulse control and lead to " 'roid rage," so that interactions between steroid-bulked bouncers and cranky customers are more likely to end violently, said Geoff Gibbs, a former bouncer from California who founded www.bounceron

line.net in 2003.

Bouncers who go bonkers have been a boon for lawyers. Hospitality experts say that civil liability resulting from the use of force in nightclubs and restaurants is the highest preventable loss in the industry.

Russell Kolins, who owned a nightclub in New Jersey for 10 years, now makes a living as a security expert and legal consultant who testifies in liquor and negligent-security liability cases.

"Every venue is as different as a fingerprint, so no one size fits all in terms of club security," Kolins said. "But there are standards that should be upheld by all establishments, from the responsible management of alcohol to great communication skills and a knowledge of what the law is and your establishment's policies are."

Keeping chaos at bay starts with stringent screening, said Kolins and other security experts.

"I'm not saying big, burly guys aren't needed, because you might have big, burly patrons," Gibbs said.

"But when you have an applicant bragging about his martial-arts and military experience, or trying to show he has the skills to fight, that shouldn't be at the top of the [job-qualifications] list," Gibbs added. "Defusing a situation calmly in a professional manner and providing good customer service are key. You want your customer happy, because then chances are, you won't have any problems."

Bowser doesn't remember the ambulance ride to the hospital.

He does remember the haste with which Thomas Jefferson University Hospital doctors moved to stop his arm, which looked like pulverized meat on a butcher's block, from bleeding. His blood-pressure dipped so low, he said, they feared he'd go into cardiac arrest.

Two weeks after his injury, he had to have a skin-stretching surgery to assist with healing. Six months ago, he had plastic surgery to remove excess scar tissue.

He sued the bar, the bartender and two bouncers - a term the Field House shuns in favor of "goodwill ambassadors" - to recover his medical expenses, lost wages and damages from "premises liability (because the door didn't have shatterproof glass), assault and battery, and false imprisonment." He made a $545,000 settlement demand, according to court documents. The case ended in a confidential settlement in February.

But attorney Michael L. Saile Jr., who represented Bowser, remains unsatisfied. Bouncers, he said, are charged with preserving peace in a potentially volatile environment and should face more stringent screening and training.

"When you're dealing with public safety, you should have procedures like police have procedures," Saile said. "If you're going to put your hands on somebody, you better know what you're doing. They didn't even ask Dean what happened, or say, 'Will you please leave?' That's unacceptable."

Field House owner Brian Harrington said he couldn't comment in detail on Bowser's case because of the confidentiality requirement. But he said that he was satisfied with how his security staff handled Bowser that night.

"I don't believe they acted outside of their scope and responsibility," Harrington said. "We were prepared to vigorously defend ourselves in this suit, but our insurance company decided to settle. We would still tell you that we did nothing wrong." He added: "We have a comprehensive training program for every position in all of our establishments, including security."

What's undisputed is that an argument erupted over the $150 bar tab that Bowser, his friend Bruno and Bowser's brother had amassed. First, Bruno waited at the bar for 10 minutes to pay; when a bartender finally ran his card, it didn't work. As Bruno and the bartender argued whether his card or the machine that was faulty, Bowser approached and grabbed Bruno's card.

The bartender snatched it back, and later testified in deposition that Bowser tried to punch him. He tackled Bowser to help bouncers restrain him, he testified. Bowser admitted that he struggled against the bouncers - only because he didn't know they were bouncers.

In a 19-page report, Kolins found that the bartender and bouncers didn't follow the Field House's written policies, which require bouncers to alert a manager about a disgruntled patron, and which forbid any "hold, maneuver, grasp or technique that would inflict grievous harm."

Attorney Joseph D. Deal, who represented the bar, bartender and two "goodwill ambassadors" in Bowser's suit, countered that Bowser's aggression allowed no time for staffers to politely introduce themselves, talk him down and involve a manager.

"His arm went through the window as a result of his struggling as he was being escorted out, not because he was thrown through the door/window," Deal said.

But Bowser remains unconvinced. "I have a scar that I'm going to have for the rest of my life, and it's not like I got it for doing something heroic or unavoidable," Bowser said. "It's not like I went surfing and got bit by a shark. It's something that shouldn't have happened, something that could have been resolved in so many other ways."