Bar sues city
Silver Stallion owner believes city trying to close tavern

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

The Sliver Stallion Saloon sits at 2604 Historic Route 66. The owner, Benny Padilla, has filed a lawsuit against the city. [Photo by ohn A. Bowersmith/Independent]

GALLUP — Mayor Bob Rosebrough has expended a good deal of effort pushing the city's liquor dealers up against the laws that govern their industry since taking office two years ago.

Now, some of those dealers are pushing back.

The author of one petition urging the city to keep the American Bar in the heart of downtown Gallup says she's collected 700 signatures and counting. It was her response to recent comments Rosebrough made in The Independent about the bar's behavior, and came with a letter accusing police of harassing and profiling its American Indian customers.

That was just the introduction.

This past Monday, another bar decided to take the city to court.

William Stripp, representing Silver Stallion Saloon owner Benny Padilla, filed a suit in McKinley County District Court April 18 accusing Rosebrough, City Manager Eric Honeyfield and Gallup Police Chief Sylvester Stanley of conspiring to run his client's bar out of business.

Padilla declined to comment.

In the suit, Stripp accuses the city of targeting the Silver Stallion because of its predominantly American Indian patrons in order to strip Padilla of his liquor license and transfer it "to a 'whiter' establishment."

Rosebrough dismissed any charges of racism and denied having any designs to run Padilla out of business.

Despite the efforts of some to misconstrue his position on the local liquor industry, he said, "my goals have been crystal clear for over two years now."

To set the record straight, the mayor broke it down one more time: enforce existing laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol to intoxicated individuals; seek legal recourse against dealers who tailor their businesses around those who are alcohol-dependent; abate the prevalence of broken glass containers around town.

In the suit, Stripp lists all the "good faith efforts" his client has taken to abide by those laws, from instructing his employees to card all patrons and not sell to intoxicated people to placing signs inside and outside of his bar.

But the statistics, Rosebrough said, speak for themselves.

The statistics he referred to come from a report put together by Gallup Deputy Police Chief Don Raley on the number of citations received by local liquor establishments since January. With two pending city citations for selling to intoxicated persons, and four more from the state, the Silver Stallion comes in third, behind the Paramount Lounge's 10 and El Dorado's nine or 11.

Stripp's suit claims that attention is a part of the city's concerted efforts to shut the Silver Stallion down, and cites two Gallup police officers Benny Gaona and Owen Pea as having told Padilla just that.

Gaona could not be reached for comment.

Pea, no longer with the Gallup Police Department, denies the claim.

"I was never told to go shut down a bar," he said.

Pea did, however, say he was told something else.

He said that Rosebrough, Honeyfield, Stanley and Gallup Police Capt. John Allen told him to "keep an eye out" on three specific bars: Class Act, El Dorado, and the Silver Stallion.

Pea said he took the instruction to mean that he was to visit those three bars more than the others.

But Pea didn't think that was right, and said he didn't comply.

"To me, as a police officer, it wasn't ethically right to target one bar over any others," he said.

When asked specifically if he had ever told Pea or Gaona to target the three bars, Rosebrough declined to comment.

Besides trying to get the city off its case, Padilla is asking the court to award him punitive damages for the city's "malicious, willful, reckless, wanton, fraudulent" behavior and compensatory damages for the business he claims it's driven off.

Rosebrough, a lawyer by training, sounds ready for the challenge.

"I welcome the opportunity to resolve this in open court," he said.

The city has 30 days from April 18 to respond.