Bar battle building
City, taverns take differences to court

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — After two years of trying to solve their differences outside of the courts, the tentative truce between the city and local liquor dealers has officially been broken.

Silver Stallion Saloon owner Benny Padilla filed a lawsuit in McKinley County District Court April 18 accusing top city officials of conspiring to close his bar in order to transfer his liquor license to a "whiter" establishment.

The City Council, meanwhile, is scheduled this evening to take a look at how many citations some local bars have received for selling to underage and intoxicated individuals since January. Those numbers will determine whether the city is ready to file its own lawsuits against any dealers using a new nuisance ordinance.

Making the list
The ordinance the council approved late last year includes a provision that lets the city sue any dealer whose establishment receives three citations leading to convictions for selling alcohol to an underage or intoxicated individual within 180 days. If the dealer fails to stay compliant for the next six months, the city can have the bar closed for one to three years.

Mayor Bob Rosebrough, who has led the city's latest press on the local liquor industry since taking office two years ago, believes the ordinance's value lies in the example it sets.

"Communities get the behavior that they are willing to accept," he said.

On one hand, the city ordinance sets a higher standards for bars than the state statutes, which strip a dealer's license after a fifth conviction within a year. On the other hand, Rosebrough said, it's more lenient than the state statutes, which don't offer dealers six months to clean up their act.

In February, City Manager Eric Honeyfield expected to put the ordinance to use no later than May. That deadline now looks unlikely.

While five bars have received more than two citations since January, according to a report compiled by the Gallup Police Department at the mayor and council's request, not one has yet to receive three convictions. Of all the citations between the five bars, in fact, the Police Department knows of only one conviction to date.

Art Diaz isn't surprised that the citations are adding up. Although his business, Pal Joey's Kitchen and Lounge, hasn't received a single citation since January, Diaz believes it's inevitable for any liquor dealer.

"We do the best we can," he said, "but every now and then, you have a slip-up."

Cutting customers off before they've reached their legal limit can be hard, Diaz said, even when they're alcoholics, sometimes especially when they're alcoholics.

"How do you determine that when you have a person making $6 an hour, and (the customers) come to you stone sober?" he asked. "Yeah, they may be alcohol-dependent, but they hide it very well."

But it may be more than bad luck when a bar racks up more than nine citations in less than four months, Diaz said, as some have. And he does not blame it on racial profiling or overzealous police enforcement, either.

Because the consequences of not complying with liquor laws can prove fatal, he said, "you can't pay enough attention on that."

Diaz said police officers walk through his bar every Friday and Saturday night.

"So far we've had no problems. Personally, I like their presence," he said. "I wouldn't say they're profiling anybody. I think they're just doing their job."

That depends who you ask.

Standing out from the crowd
Ask Shad Rashid, and you're bound to get some very different answers.

Rashid has been running the El Dorado Restaurant and Lounge for his father, Jim Rashid, who owns the license for more than nine months now. Since January, he's received between nine and 11 citations, securing the top spot on the Police Department's list.

But Rashid doesn't believe the numbers.

"I run this place like the military," he said, noting the eight hours of state-approved training his servers receive, the security cameras, the 12-1 ratio of customers to employees, and the 30-1 ration of customers to security guards. "So when we get a citation, I say no way."

So where do all the citations come from?

Rashid blames it on entrapment.

"(The police) sit in my parking lot, they wait, and right when (the customers) come in my doors, they test them," he said, with breathalyzers, before they've had a single drink in his bar.

It's the same charge Padilla levels at the city in his lawsuit, although the suit leaves out the details, and Padilla would not elaborate.

Like Padilla's suit, Rashid also accuses the city of targeting his establishment and profiling his American Indian customers.

Rashid says American Indians make up less than a third of his customers but can't remember the last time the bar was cited for serving a non-American Indian or the last time a non-American Indian was allegedly harassed there.

"Maybe they just don't want Native Americans in town, the ones that drink," he said.

Padilla, an American Indian himself, believes the city is trying to shut him down because most his customers are American Indian and because the mayor has designs to transfer his liquor license to an establishment that might attract more white customers. American Bar owner Joe Zecca, whose bar has served downtown Gallup for more than 50 years, also accuses the city of going out of its way to harass the American Indians who visit the neighborhood and make up a large share of his customers. Like the El Dorado, the American Bar and Silver Stallion are also among the five bars with more than two citations.

They mayor and police chief flatly deny any racial motives; however, they're cautious about charges that they've asked officers to pay more attention to some bars than others.

Rashid says he sees police cars parked in front of bar nightly, attention he doesn't see paid to some others.

Padilla also feels targeted and accuses the city of violating his Constitutional right to equal protection of the law.

When the El Dorado's security alarm goes off, Rashid said it takes the police 25 minutes to arrive. But when they hear of an alcohol-related incident at the bar? Rashid snapped his fingers, to suggest that the police show up right away.

In his suit, Padilla cites former Gallup Police Officer Owen Pea to prove his point. Pea, he claims, personally told him that city officials wanted the Silver Stallion shut down.

In an interview with The Independent, Pea said city officials never told him to shut the bar down. They did, he said, tell him to "keep an eye" on three specific bars: the Class Act, the El Dorado, and the Silver Stallion. That order came from Rosebrough, Stanley and City Manager Eric Honeyfield, said Pea, who took it to mean he was expected to visit those bars more than others.

Rosebrough declined to comment on Pea's claim, and Stanley refused to answer any questions about the lawsuit.

Honeyfield did deny Pea's claim. The city manager said he told Pea to "pay attention" to the bars with the most citations, without naming names, and to monitor all the bars "fairly," which he said meant equally.

Is there a problem officer?
How aggressively you believe the city ought to regulate the local liquor industry may depend on how much of a problem you believe exists.

Considering the number intoxicated people the Police Department's protective custody units pick up every day, city officials believe the answer is obvious. The Police Department reports picking up 1,334 people during the first three months of this year. That's compared to a city population of approximately 20,000 people, although many of those picked up come from the surrounding county and the nearby Navajo reservation, where alcohol sales are banned.

In the mayor's opinion, "It's a problem of substance and a problem of reputation and perception about Gallup."

It's a problem of substance because of the area's many alcohol-dependent and transient people, he said, and a problem of perception because it's stigmatized the city for decades.

"I have a deep, heartfelt conviction that for Gallup to realize its potential as a community, we need to address both," he said.

Public intoxication keeps people from fully enjoying the city's amenities, Rosebrough said, and gets in the way of economic progress by driving off both customers and tourists.

Rashid doesn't see a problem and hangs the incidence of public intoxication on the same crowd of approximately 100 people.

Diaz doesn't deny that things could get better, but he's happy with the progress the city has made.

"I've been here all my life, and it's not like the old days," he said, when intoxicated people would regularly fall asleep in his bar's foyer.

Treatment options are increasing, he added, and rising fines are making dealers more cautions.

Diaz used to be the secretary of the McKinley County Liquor Dealers Association, a voluntary partnership between most of the city's dealers that negotiated concessions with the city. Before breaking up, the dealers agreed to shorten their hours and stop selling 40-ounce glass bottles to help cut down on the prevalence of broken glass around town.

Diaz hopes to revive the association, but city officials say they've lost faith in the arrangement's ability to effect the change they're aiming for.

Even if Diaz succeeds in breathing new life into the association, unless there's a major change in direction on both sides, the city and dealers are on course to resolving at least some of their differences in court.