Hey, there! Log in / Register
So a drunk walks up to a bar with a loaded gun
By adamg on Tue, 06/21/2011 - 12:59pm
No joke: The Boston Licensing Board decides Thursday what to do about a Broad Street bar that confiscated a loaded 9-mm firearm from a drunk guy trying to get in and then didn't tell police until the next day.
At a hearing today, board Chairwoman Nicole Murati Ferrer and member Michael Connolly said they were amazed and appalled that nobody at the Bar Room, 5 Broad St., immediately called 911.
"I'm a former police officer, a former military police officer in Viet Nam," Connolly said. ".38s, .44s, I would never keep a gun in my home because i have such an awesome respect for the firepower of weapons, especially 9 mm. ... Any time an individual shows up intoxicated with a 9-mm weapon, you can't get to that phone fast enough."
According to Boston Police Sgt. Det. Michael Talbot and bar manager Frank Borriello, a drunk white guy in plaid shorts and a golf shirt tried to gain admittance to the bar around 1 a.m. on April 22. On patting him down, the doorman felt the gun, then removed it from the man's belt. The man said he was in the military and had a license to carry, but while he showed a military ID, he had no gun license, and the doorman brought the gun inside and handed it to Borriello, who said he put it in a safe in his office.
Meanwhile, the man left. Although either he or a friend tried to recover the gun later that day, Borriello, then not on the premises, wanted to meet the owner in person. However, police say, the man never returned and to date they still do not know anything about its owner - except that it has not been reported stolen.
"I just didn't think it was an emergency," Borriello said. "Why waste everybody's time to come pick it up?" Although the guy was drunk, "he wasnt being unruly, he wasn't being a moron," so there seemed no imminent danger.
In hindsight, and after some withering comments from the two board members, Borriello allowed as how he should have called 911 right away - and tried to write down the man's ID information.
Ferrer said Borriello may have gotten incredibly lucky - if the man had used the gun in a crime that night, police would have lost a valuable lead.
Borriello added that when he did decide to contact police the next night, he first contacted a detail officer at the garage where he parks and then another detail cop walking outside. He said neither wanted to retrieve the gun because it would mean filling out paperwork that would take them away from their details.
Talbot, however, said he was particularly vexed to learn that Borriello himself has a license to carry a gun - which means he should know that a drunk is never supposed to be carrying a loaded weapon, because that's grounds for a charge of illegal weapons possession. And, he added, it's not up to a bar manager to decide to simply toss a loaded gun into a safe.
Talbot said the incident is even more troubling because there have been at least three incidents of gunfire in the Broad Street area in recent months.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Seriously?
So basically they are going to punish the bar for checking to see if patrons are armed?
It's almost as if....
...they want drunks carrying firearms.
No, that's not the infraction
The infraction would be failing to notify police.
Huh?
How did you get that from reading that??
They're punishing a bar for theft, illegal possession of a firearm, and failure to call the police (which their license basically requires them to do in any incident).
The bar is LUCKY they're just in front of the licensing board.
If I were the gun owner, I'd have called the cops myself for the theft. They aren't the police. They have no right to take that gun from me whether I'm drunk or not, whether I'm carrying my CCW or not. They don't want to let me in...fine. They want to call the cops on me...fine. They don't get to decide what to do with my possessions however.
Yeah, No.
Stop hyperventilating, for fuck's sake.
First off, Massachusetts allows for citizen's arrest in the case where the citizen believes a felony is being committed.
Second: The bouncer disarmed someone who voluntarily submitted to a search on private property (most likely) and possessed a handgun illegally. That action is not illegal for a private citizen, it's certainly not illegal for someone acting as a security guard, and it's certainly not illegal when there's an arguable case of self defense. A bouncer who finds a weapon on a drunk guy has an immediate fear for his life and the lives of others nearby, as said drunk guy might take discovery of the weapon as an excuse to go for it and start shooting.
The issue is not that they confiscated the firearm; the issue is that they didn't immediately call the police to report the crime.
Quoting law out your ass?
Most bouncers stop you on the sidewalk, not inside the bar. The search was probably on public property. In order for the bouncer to establish any likelihood of a felony being committed, he'd have to prove that the guy was drunk and/or without an LTC. Since the guy has no responsibility to produce an LTC to anyone but an officer and I doubt the bouncer breathylized the guy, he's hard pressed by MA's citizen's arrest trial law to prove the commission of the felony (illegal possession of a firearm) and, besides, he DIDN'T arrest the guy...he ONLY took his gun.
Finally, the fact that they didn't call the police immediately (if only to turn over the gun) is *exactly* to point of them illegally confiscating the gun! If I take your property, then fail to immediately turn it over to police...what differentiates me from a thief?
Lots of grey areas here.
-Did the person have the right to carry the weapon? No matter what kind of license he has, he was drunk, so that would exclude him from being able to carry a weapon. Now that is a misdemeanor, so a private citizen would not have the right to take the gun from him. But a police officer would be able to take the weapon, a private citizen would probably not be able to.
Military personel are able to carry weapons on their ID cards, but they have to have permission from the military. I am thinking this guy did not have permission to have this weapon, therefore he could possibly be comitting a felony.
As for the bouncer, I don't see him doing anything criminal here. Sure, he took the gun, but it is an understood practice that bouncers can search people, and often times do this on a public sidewalk (and cities can be picky with permits for lines and stuff like this as well)
And now the manager has a right to carry firearms. So he keeps the gun (legally since he has a license), and keeps it like he would any other lost item. If this was a wallet or something else, how long does he have then?
There are two issues here, did the bouncer and manager commit a crime? And did the bouncer and manager make the wrong choice as being licensed alcohol sellers in the city.
I say they did not commit crimes, but did make the wrong choice as bar staff.
Lost?
My, that's awfully generous of you to compare it to a lost item.
That gun was not a lost item. It was a taken item.
I meant that you can keep them with the lost items.
And treat them the same since they are all property that you have no intent to keep for yourself (if this is the case here)
At some point you have a duty to try to contact the owners of all of items if possible. Guns are more serious obviously, but even a wallet with a license should be turned into the police at some point.
more ignorance
Most bouncers stop you on the sidewalk, not inside the bar. The search was probably on public property.
Bzzzz, thank you for playing. "Sidewalk" does not equal "public property". If you don't believe me, go wander around the financial district and look closely at the sidewalk. Some of the buildings have markers in the sidewalk showing you where the property line is. Also note the sidewalk trap-door loading docks.
Since the guy has no responsibility to produce an LTC to anyone but an officer and I doubt the bouncer breathylized the guy,
Bzzzzt, thank you for playing. 1)The bouncer can ask you what your favorite color is, perfectly legally. If you want to get in, you answer, and you show your certified Favorite Color Card. If you don't want to answer, you walk. Again, stop with the hyperventilating. What is it with you fucking gun nuts? Hey, I heard Obama wants to tattoo gun owner's SSNs to their foreheads for the new government world order (the barcode goes on your ass.)
2)Breathalyzers are only used in DUI/OUI because those cases involve a defined percentage. Read virtually any arrest report involving drunkenness that isn't DUI/OUI; There's a pretty standard set of phrases that Pete Nice can probably recite by heart that involve symptoms of drunkenness observed. For example, if your 16 year old son is found wandering around at night drunk off his ass, a cop doesn't have to have him blow into anything to arrest him for underage drinking.
Arguing around the point
Look, you're the one that brought up all of these things to take the onus off of the bar/bouncer to act legally in taking the guy's gun. You can't then argue away from the point in order to deflect from what you originally said just because it was so stupid. See Pete's response above? It's still to the point. As I pointed out above (and you somehow didn't find as "more ignorance" because you didn't address it), regardless of whether he was on the public public sidewalk or the private public sidewalk...it wasn't a citizen's arrest anyways so your initial nonsense still negates anything you were trying to say.
What did the bar do wrong here?
They confiscated the gun -- that's the most important thing, no? Once it's in their safe, it's not going to be used to commit a crime.
What if the gun had just been used in a crime?
Now the criminal is gone without a trace. It sounds like the bar got lucky - there was no violent crime the gun might be tied to that night. But it's hardly their decision to make.
In fact, there was a crime that night. A drunk in possession of a loaded gun can be charged with illegal possession of a firearm, even if he has a license, Talbot said.
Should they have tried to detain him until police arrived?
That could be dangerous for them -- he could have another undetected weapon such as a knife, for instance.
Exactly
And he wouldn't have disappeared without a trace. He'd have left the weapon behind, maybe with fingerprints and serial # information, not to mention a detailed description from the bouncer who took it from him.
The more Adam reports on these hearings, the worse I feel for bar and club owners.
The bar should have called
The bar should have called the police and not just let the guy walk off into the night.
n/m
(redacted after rereading)
No
Talbot said leave police work to the police - which police could have done if called immediately instead of 24 hours later.
Adam did you mean someone else here?
Talbot, however, said he was particularly vexed to learn that Talbot himself has a license to carry a gun - which means he should know that a drunk is never supposed to be carrying a loaded weapon, because that's grounds for a charge of illegal weapons possession. And, he added, it's not up to a bar manager to decide to simply toss a loaded gun into a safe.
Did you mean the bar manager had a license?
You're right, sorry about that
Talbot was referring to the bar manager, not himself. Fixed.
If my memory serves me, this
If my memory serves me, this is the former Peter's Place. The stories that could be told....
Why are they searching someone who shouldn't be admitted?
If the guy was drunk, what was the point of searching him? If he didn't have the gun, would he have been admitted, drunk?
I am confused.
There's some really weird framing going on here by Talbot. Yes, it's illegal to carry a weapon around while you're drunk, even if you have a license. But it's also illegal to present a fake ID to get into a bar, and I don't see anyone clamoring for bars to call the cops every time they confiscate a fake ID. It sounds like the bouncer defused the situation by confiscating the gun, and it also sounds like it was a pretty good-faith decision to think that the guy who had had the weapon confiscated would be back the next day to claim his (very expensive) gun. Since there was no imminent danger of anything getting out of hand, and no evidence that any crime had been committed, what would have compelled Boriello to call the police, when he knows that every time the police show up at his bar, the licensing agency will use it as another strike against him?
Fake IDs don't kill people, guns kill people
Yes, we know now no serious crime was committed that night, but unless the doorman was actually an undercover cop with one ear tuned to a police radio, how would he know that?
Licensing board requirements - which all bar managers swear they are familiar with when they get approved by the licensing board (yes, they are specifically asked about that) - mandate bars and restaurants contact police whenever something serious happens either on their premises or on the sidewalk right out front.
How is this not theft?
What gives the bar the right to take this guy's gun? They aren't the police. This was a private citizen and so were they...that's theft...and they've admitted to these facts, so why haven't they been arrested for it yet?
Also, what kind of bar pats you down to go inside?
permenantly deprive
is the key element to any larceny offense. The bar may have not wanted to keep the gun forever, they just didn't want a drunk guy with a gun in their bar, or from what I am reading, maybe they didn't want a drunk guy with a gun anywhere?
And if the bouncer did not have a permit to carry, then maybe he comitted a crime, but was the search done inside or outside? Did the guy give up the gun voluntarily?
There is some more to this story.
per the MGLs
if the person who has access to the safe doesn't have their LTC, they should be arrested on a firearms violation. And Kaz is right, they should have called the police if they suspected a problem, taking personal property is not he job of a bouncer or restauranteur.
How permanently?
So, all the thieves in jail were just too stupid to say "but I was going to pay them back!" or to leave "IOUs" at the crime scenes of their thefts?
I did some Google searching and found an interesting opinion from NY State's supreme court (pdf) where they applied common law and other court precedences that basically said if the bouncer intended only to temporarily possess it long enough to do a public service "like unarm a drunk who was in illegal possession of the firearm" AND THEN give it to the police as immediately as possible, then it's okay.
Unfortunately for the Boston bouncer and the bar owner, they decided to stow it and not call police...this breaks the "temporary"-ness of their possession as laid out in the NYC decision and leaves them wide open to illegal possession and possibly larceny.
Sure, maybe
But the guy didn't come back either to get his property. The manager did have a legal right to carry a weapon, so the gun should be treated like any other piece of property. For the theft part you have to ask yourself: Did these guys have a criminal intent to steal the gun?
I'm not saying they shouldn't have called the cops. That would have been the best thing to do.
Like I said, it sounds like there is more to this story. Almost sounds like this guy did not have the right to carry a firearm in public. The bouncer pats him down, and takes it away for his own protection right off the bat. Then the bouncer has to make a quick desision to either give the gun back to the drunk man, or give it to someone he can trust with a firearm. Now it doesn't belong to the bouncer or the bar, but Im saying there are all sorts of circumstances here.
I called 911 to report seeing a gun...
I was walking my dog a few weeks ago when I happened to look into a parked car and saw a dude handling a pistol. I immediately called 911 to report what I had seen. While on the phone, the car drove by so I was able to provide a tag number in addition to description. The dispatcher assured me that the police would send someone to the area where it appeared the car was heading (I live in a neighborhood where pretty much all the action happens on one street). After walking the dog, I decided it was a good idea (terrible one, in fact) to get in my car and see if I could locate the subject car. Sure enough, the car and its occupants were parked on the trouble street. With a cop parked about a block away. And not doing anything.
Two days later, a detective from BPD called to get more information. Said they were "actively looking for the car." Interesting that the car was a block from one of them the night of the incident and yet nothing was done.
The point of this long-winded post is to say who cares when the bar called 911. Would BPD really have responded immediately, knowing that the bar had confiscated the firearm? Seems doubtful.
Gun calls are tricky
From what you described, there is basically nothing the cops can do about that car or the person in the car except watch it. Someone with a gun is not enough to even start a threshold inquiry, and many cases have been lost because of this.
Interesing case back in the 1990s out of Lowell where a store clerk saw someone in his store with a gun in his waistband. The clerk calls the police, who respond and pull the man over and arrest him (he didn't have a license). The whole case got overturned because the only reason the cops stoped him was because a citizen saw someone with a gun, and having a gun isn't always illegal.
And depending on the street, there may have been units watching the car, the owner of the car may have checked out with having an LTC, or the cop you saw wasn't involved with the district in anyway. Unmarked cars and gang units are usually all over these types of calls though, so I'd be suprised if nothing was done.