Repeat Liquor-License Offenders Get Whacked, Including Loss of a License

A Chinese restaurant in Rumford lost its liquor license for at least 6 months for serving underage teens three times within the past two years at Tuesday night’s East Providence City Council meeting. It also will be forced to close on Friday, July 19, for one day and pay a $1,000 fine.

A Rumford liquor store will lose three days of business this weekend for selling beer to 17-year-old boys twice in two years and pay a $1,000 fine.

An East Providence comedy club was fined $1,000 for serving alcohol to two 19-year-old males last March – its second offense in two years.

The City Council, sitting as the liquor license board, meted out those penalties to the repeat offenders on Tuesday night. 

“We’re hoping these penalties send a message to other businesses that this will not be tolerated in East Providence,” said East Providence Police Sgt. John Andrews of the Community Policing Division. “I’m very satisfied.”

Jennifer Wall, who heads the East Providence Prevention Coalition, said: “They did what they needed to do. I support what they did and for advocating stricter policies for liquor license violators.”

Indeed, said City Councilor Thomas Rose Jr., “We need a program that’s more than paying a fine and out the door. We need to look at what other towns are doing.”

All of the businesses were “stung” by the Community Police Division working with teens from the coalition earlier this year.

Teens aged 17 and 18 were sent into the East Buffet restaurant to sit at a table and order beer. They were served without showing an ID.

Two 17-year-old males entered Brookfield Liquors and walked out with a 6-pack of beer without being carded. 

Two 19-year-old males entered the Comedy Connection, sat down at a table and were served beer without being asked to show an ID.

A police officer waited outside in all the cases and then walked into the businesses to cite them.

The toughest penalty, obviously, went to East Buffet, a Chinese restaurant in Rumford that has been stung three times since June of 2011. The restaurant, in effect, must now reapply for its liquor license in December when all licenses are renewed by the City Council.

The Comedy Connection got off the lightest because it did not serve minors in March -- just underage persons.

Before the City Councilors started the show-cause hearings for the three repeat offenders, it heard several people plead with them to penalize the businesses to the maximum.

Nelson Almeida, a selectman from Seekonk, said the town has begun imposing much harsher penalties on liquor license violators, including revoking their licenses.

The most impassioned and emotional comments came from Dan Converse of Barrington, whose son died in a car crash after drinking with three other friends who were all intoxicated more than 5 years ago. He now speaks widely about the need to control underage drinking.

"I saw in the Patch what you were doing," said Converse. "I had to come and speak."

“Don’t think it can’t happen to you,” Converse told the City Council and everyone in the room. “I was one of those people who never gave it a thought. Now I carry my son around inside my head twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.”