WESTFIELD – The License Commission has set a special violation hearing for the Panda House restaurant after a police investigation found underaged patrons had been served alcoholic beverages.
The violation hearing had be originally set for this past Monday, June 10, but nobody showed up to represent the restaurant resulting in the commission setting a special June 24 meeting.
The letter, sent to the owner, also includes a warning which states: “Failure to appear at the second hearing will result in the revocation of your liquor license.”
The commission is acting as the result of a police report, dated April 14, 2013, in which two groups of underaged patrons were drinking scorpion bowls, a mixed drink containing gin, rum, vodka, fruit juice and sometimes other forms of alcohol.
The original summons to appear before the License Commission on June 10 was delivered in hand by a police officer and accepted by Cuiying Lin, restaurant owner, on May 29. The summons also requires that the two waitresses, who served the two tables of under-aged patrons, also be present at the special meeting.
The police initiated the April 15 investigation after receiving a call from another patron of the restaurant that stating there appeared to be several persons under the age of 21 consuming alcohol.
The responding officers found two separate groups of under-aged youths at two separate tables, one group of six from Agawam and Southwick at one table and a group of six Westfield State University students at the other table. (One of the patrons at the college table was drinking water, as the designated driver, and passed a test on a portable breath test machine. She was allowed to drive the other college patrons home).
The officers spoke with the waitresses servicing the tables and identified who had shown identification at the tables. The officers then asked the youths, who had presented identification for their identification. The youths presented identification showing they were clearly underage, which were then shown to the waitresses.
The waitresses told the officers that those IDs were not the ones shown originally, so the officers spoke again with the underaged patrons and were given the fake identifications originally used. In total the officer collected three fake ids from the Feeding Hills/Southwick table and three from the college table.
The local youths were detained until they contacted their parents for rides home because the officers were concerned about the potency of the mixed drink.
Lin will answer to three charges before the License Commission during the special meeting alleging violations by of allowing an illegality and two counts of allegedly serving under-aged patrons.
The state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC) limits the identification that can be accepted as proof of age to six forms under Massachusetts General Law 138, section 34-b.
That list provides a level of indemnification to businesses that check identification if the false identification provided is one of the following, which includes both state and federal picture-identification.
The acceptable identification are a Massachusetts driver’s license, an ABCC identification card or a Massachusetts Identification Card, all of which have a photo of the owner. The ABCC also allows the use of a federally issued passport or passport card or military identification, which are also forms of photo identifications.
One of the false identification cards was a valid document, the driver’s license of that patron’s older sister, but the others were out-of-state, and one out-of-country, identification documents.
