This question in today from an anonymous poster: What are your thoughts on the "City Haul" 262 and Cruise Inn issues and what if anything should the city do about the bars in this town?
My view on this situation is somewhat unique as I used to be a bar manager. Early in my career I was the beverage manager at Water Street Brewery in Milwaukee. We trained our beverage and wait staff to check Ids for anyone that was not obviously over 30.
My point, people who serve alcoholic beverages need to exercise extreme caution in seeing that it is done in a responsible manner. If people get “over-served” you need to cut them off. If problems with behavior creep up the management of these bars need to look at their policies and adjust them as necessary in order to be good community neighbors. If they need security, they should get it in order to keep things on the up and up.
There have been problems with serving under-age patrons and violence occurring. This can not be tolerated and if the operators of these taverns can not control the behavior within their bars then they should face penalties up to and including fines and if necessary the revocation of their liquor licenses.
At a minimum I would encourage increased police patrols and inspections when you consider the recent history there.
I don’t know enough at this point about what the proprietors have done to clean up their bars to say yes or no on the issue of license revocation.
I understand that the possibility exists that a due process hearing would be required in order to pull a liquor license and that may cost the city $4,000 to $8,000 per occurrence. That is unfortunate but may be necessary.
My thanks for your question.
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4 comments:
Fred, the problem that I have with your answer here is that you place the entire burden of problematic behavior on the bar owners. Granted, they should take reasonable measures to ensure the safety of their patrons, but, Racine being Racine, there will be idiots that behave badly or unlawfully. The system that we have in place now provides a disincentive for bar owners to cooperate with police, because if they call the police too often, they will risk losing their liquor license. I think there should be a clear distinction between patron behavior and bar owner behavior, and bar owners should only be held accountable for their own behavior. Likewise, criminals should be held accountable for their own behavior. Denis Navratil.
I don't think that is at all what I am saying Denis.
What I am saying is bar owners/operators bare a great deal of responsibility due to the very nature of their businesses.
If they do not live up to that responsibility they very much need to be held accountable.
That was a very political answer, insofar as I still don't know what you mean. So let me offer a hypothetical example. Bar A is in a rough neighborhood. The owner has a clean record. He has not broken any laws concerning sales to minors, he pays his taxes, he closes on time etc... Yet fights break out regularly. When they do, he cooperates with law enforcement. He calls police, he gives accurate statements, etc... Even so, the fights continue. My question to you is, what should be done in this situation? Should he be required to pay for off duty police officers? Should he lose his license? Or should he be applauded for his cooperation with law enforcement? Denis Navratil.
Denis, if a proprietor was doing everything possible to cooperate with police and be a good community neighbor, I would likely not support pulling their license.
If however, things continued to be bad and it was determined the bar was creating a problem for people in the neighborhood you may have to consider the fact that the bar should not be in that residential area.
I would certainly encourage the police department to do everything they could do to discourage the activity you describe.
I'm the last person who would want to punish businesspeople who are trying to enhance the local economy Denis. Quite the contrary, I think we should do everything possible to ecourage entrepenurial activity in this community.
However, I would not put that aside if that activity created blight on a neighborhood no matter how well intentioned the owner may be.
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