No matter how obnoxious an ejected bar patron gets, a doorman shouldn't just kick him in the balls, board concludes

The Boston Licensing Board today formally warned Bodega, 69 Canal St., that the correct response for a staffer being harassed by somebody who'd just been ejected is to call 911, not kick him in the crotch.

Commissioner Liam Curran initially wanted to suspend the bar's liquor license for a day, but commissioners Kathleen Joyce and Keeana Saxon convinced him to issue a formal warning - its second to the bar since another staff-on-patron incident in 2018.

At a hearing on Tuesday, police said a man who'd been kicked out of the bar late on Oct. 2, got in the face of a staff member as he stood outside for roughly 15 minutes. The doorman told police the man began insulting him for being a Muslim, then a scuffle broke out when the man claimed he was going to his car to get a gun and the doorman tried to stop him.

Arriving police officers found the man with "visible lacerations to his nose and left cheek," one officer told the board.

The man, who attended the hearing, said he was waiting for his girlfriend and two friends to come out and said he couldn't have been going to his car to get a gun since he didn't have a car - he said he finally got tired of waiting and started to walk away to meet an Uber he'd called And he denied insulting the bouncer's religion, saying he simply told him "I love you, man," in Arabic. He said the bouncer beat him up, including kicking him in his genitals, that he required a couple of weeks of medical care and is still receiving therapy for the trauma.

The man acknowledged that in his roughly 2 1/2 hours sitting at the bar, he'd had two or three beers, an Old Fashioned, a shot and a mixed drink. "I wasn't sober but i wouldn't say I was belligerent or extremely intoxicated," he said.

Because of the alleged anti-Muslim insults, a detective from the BPD civil-rights unit was assigned to the case, but he told the board the bouncer declined to seek charges.

At today's meeting, Curran said that on video supplied by the bar, "you actually see the kick alleged by the victim," and that it seemed like the doorman was really warming up for a full-throttled attack a bit down the street, once he knew he'd be out of camera range. "I found it quite disturbing," he said.

Joyce said the patron was drunk and did not appear "in the right state of mind," but that "despite his actions, I don't think the staff acted appropriately; they should not have reacted with physical force."

Instead of letting him just stand there insulting and haranguing the doorman for 15 minutes, somebody from Bodega should have called police to deal with him, she said.

Under the board's penalty system, should Bodega get cited again for police, after what are now two warnings, the board could suspend its license for a day.