It's not a party until every officer in the district arrives

The Boston Licensing Board decides Thursday what to do about a March disturbance at the Breezeway, 153 Blue Hill Ave., that police say took all 13 of District B-2's street officers and two police dogs to break up.

B-2 Sgt. James Moore described a rumble that began as an all out melee inside, then spilled outside, after an unruly patron was escorted out around 1:40 a.m. on March 9.

"It was chaos," he told the board at a hearing today. "There was pushing and pulling, bottle and cups of liquid were being thrown around." Patrons inside refused to leave as they either fought it out or watched and screamed at each other; patrons outside kept trying to get back in, he said. "Furniture was overturned," he said. "Multiple fights were breaking out."

With nobody listening to police commands to disperse, he said, officers had to resort to pushing people out - and calling more officers in.

Bar manager George Stomatos, however, painted a somewhat different picture. He said there were only three guys fighting inside. "We had it under control," he said. His lawyer, Robert Russo, expressed amazement that with 100 patrons on scene, many of them allegedly brawling or refusing to disperse, police did not make a single arrest. "If 13 police officers observed multiple fights, at least one person would be arrested for assault and battery," he said.

"No, this is not something that you have under control," board Chairwoman Nicole Murati Ferrer told them, noting the bar's lengthy record of appearances before the board and the Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs, which oversees its entertainment license.

Licensing Board member Michael Connolly asked Moore if it were fair to say that the officers were doing "everything they could do just to restore order and, as such, were not in a position to make arrests." Moore agreed. He added that Breezeway bouncers were in the thick of things, working with police to restore order.

Last fall, Consumer Affairs suspended the Breezeway's entertainment license for two weeks after a double shooting that left one dead at the bar's entrance.

Also last year, Consumer Affairs suspended the bar's entertainment license for 22 days - and the licensing board its liquor license for two weeks - after a closing time brawl that took 25 officers to clear up.