Two restaurants here in Hollywood (CA, not FL) have recently gotten rid of their happy hours. I’m getting various excuses for it, but twice I’ve been told that the Hollywood Vice cops are actively discouraging happy hours in the area to curb drunk driving.
This rasies several questions.
Why wouldn’t this affect ALL of Los Angeles? Hollywood – previous attempts to ceceed having failed – is not an independent city, but part of the Los Angeles gov’t.
Can the police legally do this? Or are they using a) polite requests or b) threats to accomplish this off the books?
I’ve never heard of a police force making up their own laws like this, and I’m sure it’s costing the bars a healthy chunk-o-profit, so I doubt they’d agree voluntarily, esoecially if other local bars were able to choose to ignore the request. So I’d normally write it off, but the fact that I heard it twice from different sources makes me want to delve deeper into this mystery of the ages.
It may be that Hollywood has a particularly high incidence of drunk driving and the police are targeting the area. Although why vice specifically would be doing the targeting I don’t know.
The police are free to request of any bar that they voluntarily stop offering drink specials or happy hours. This is not a case of the police “making law” in any way as they do not have the power to declare the specials illegal.
I would be interested in hearing exactly how these police are supposedly “actively discouraging” the practice.
I know police in the Minneapolis aea have complained about bar Happy Hours where they offer 2-for-1 drink specials, because they encourage people to buy 2 drinks instead of 1. The police would prefer that they just drop the drinks to half-price during Happy Hour instead.
And the police aren’t “making laws” here. But bars & police usually have to cooperate a bit: bars expect police to respond promptly when they call about a fight; and police expect bars to call when there is an incident. Police officers can certainly unofficially imply that if the bars refuse to cooperate on Happy Hours, they might just get less cooperation from police on other matters. Or the Fire Marshall might come by for a tough inspection. Etc.
And “costing the bars a healthy chunk-o-profit” – how so? I’d think the bar would make more by charging the regular price instead of a Happy Hour special price. Unless the customers decided to go elsewhere, but generally all the bars in a neighborhood will face the same pressure on Happy Hours.
On an almost nightly basis, I deal with the Baltimore City Board of Liquor License Commissioners and the Baltimore City Police Department’s Vice Squad at one or more of my companies nightclubs. On several occasions they have “asked” us to make changes to our operating procedures, usually trivial and mundane things such as not allowing glass bottles out onto the club’s patios, other times they have asked for major things, no longer accepting Military ID cards as a primary form of identification. Every time we have complied because if they wanted to it would be sooo easy to fine us or shut us down for trivial violations. For example, not having up to date records on all your employees instantly available to them, serving more than a certain amount of alcohol to a customer at one time (ex. they wait for a guy to buy 6 beers, 5 for his friends and one for him), having a line outside the club, having people loiter outside the club, marrying bottles and not having up to date liquor invoices from licensed wholesalers.
If we refused to comply with their requests, I’m sure on a nightly basis we would be cited for various violations costing us thousands of dollars per incident.
As an aside, the BCBLLC is one of the most corrupt organizations in the city, with several of its members and inspectors under ongoing investigations for extortion, receiving bribes and falsifying timesheets. And I’m the person who gets to deal with them on an almost nightly basis and shadow them around the club, which can be a very interesting duty on a college night where underage drinking is abound and I’m charged with ejecting all the kiddies.