Worker at downtown bar fired after telling a cop to go F himself for ticketing his SUV outside

The owner of the historic Bell in Hand tavern on Union Street downtown reports he fired a worker who four-letter excoriated a Boston cop who'd written him a ticket for parking his white BMW SUV in a no-parking area just outside the tavern late one August night.

"This is not something becoming of a Bell in Hand employee," Adam Kessler told the Boston Licensing Board this morning. "It's just unacceptable."

The bar was not cited for the swearing; Kessler appeared to answer a citation for "employee parking vehicle in restricted no stopping zone."

Det. Eddie Hernandez of the BPD licensing unit told the board he and his partner were on Union Street around 11 p.m. on Aug. 16 monitoring the street's bars when he noticed the BMW parked at the corner of Union and the narrow Marshall Street, in a no parking/no standing zone next to the Bell in Hand's patio. He said he wrote a parking ticket, and as he placed it on the windshield, noticed a BTD ticket on the other side of the windshield from the week before.

As he was looking at the earlier ticket, he said, the employee stormed over and asked him if he "didn't have anything better to do at 11 p.m." Hernandez told him to move the SUV immediately, or the next step might be having it towed.

Hernandez said the guy got in, and as he drove off, told him to "go fuck yourself."

Board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce asked Kessler if his employees routinely park in that area. She said her office has gotten reports from the mayor's office about illegal parking in the narrow space, a holdover of Boston's colonial street layout.

Kessler said no, this was an aberration and that he has always told his staff to find someplace else to park. "There's no acceptable reason for them to park out there," he said, adding that, in fact, "I call police on a regular basis," asking them to ticket all the cars that he spots parking there. "They're not ours," he said.

Kessler and his manager on duty the night of the incident both apologized to Hernandez

"We don't support any of our staff treating [police] like that," Kessler said. "They are here to protect us."

The board decides Thursday whether the incident warrants a formal sanction.