WESTFIELD – The owner of an Elm Street bar has not surrendered the license for his establishment after it was revoked by the city’s license commission, a community policing officer reports, and a criminal complaint has been filed.
At a meeting of the license commission May 29, the commissioners voted to revoke the liquor license for Tommy D’s Courtyard Pub and ordered that the owner surrender it the next day.
The special meeting of the commission had been staged to consider police complaints about the bar, the most egregious of which involved an incident in which firefighters responded to a smoke alarm and eventually found that the smoke in the bar was from a person operating a motorcycle inside the bar and “burning rubber” on the dance floor.
Other complaints alleged that, on at least two occasions, police had not been notified when combative customers had been ejected from the bar, via the same door, and continued their altercations outside.
When firefighters responded to the smoke alarm the bar owner reported that an unknown party had ignited a smoke bomb in a rest room and fled the bar without being identified.
The investigating officers found that the smoke was noticeable thicker in the area of the dance floor and much less apparent in the area of the rest room.
In addition, the investigators reported that the customers in the bar were not cooperative and made access to the dance floor difficult, obstructing the officers’ movement and getting out of the way slowly and reluctantly.
Video later posted on a social networking website showed a motorcyclist had braced the front wheel of his machine against the stage and raced the engine causing the rear wheel to spin and the rubber tire to burn.
The smoke created apparently triggered the smoke alarm.
The event was reportedly a birthday party for a member of a local motorcycle club and the participants were apparently mostly members of the club.
Officers have said that criminal complaints would be filed against the bar owner for charges such as filing a false police report and obstruction of justice but, without an arrest, charges often escape public scrutiny until a defendant is arraigned in court.
Sgt. Eric Hall, the commander of he Westfield Police Department’s community policing officers, reported that he had spoken with a license commission staffer and learned that the license had not been surrendered.
Hall reports that, in response to the owner’s failure to surrender the license, a criminal complaint was filed for a violation of Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 138, Section 65.
The law stipulates that the penalty for conviction of the offense shall be a fine of not more than $100 and/or imprisonment for as much as three months.
