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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.

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Comments

Free speech when we feel like it ?

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Bell in Hand is a private employer, not a government entity.

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How is swearing a cop, which is not a crime, an infraction worthy of a board hearing?

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I focused on the swearing because that seemed more interesting (at least to me), but the citation was for "employee parking vehicle in restricted no stopping zone." I'll add that to the story to make it clearer.

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why is a government entity in the form of the licensing board getting involved at all here? Is it a violation of the liquor license laws for employees of a business to be rude to the cops?

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Agreed. The guy is definitely a jerk and deserved to be ticketed but the licensing board threatening a business because an employee swore at a cop strikes me as a clear first amendment violation.

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When will the Internet (expletive) learn on this? I'd like to see it in my lifetime.

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Refreshing to see a response like this by the owner of the bar.

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Not to go too far into conflict with a thin-skinned gang that can F up your and your customers' lives in a hundred different ways

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Is the pen!

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…. with employees of the tavern regularly parking illegally and blocking what may be a fire lane.

The employee certainly is a jackass for swearing at the police officer and maybe deserves losing his job.

But if it’s just about this one incident, isn’t this a bit of a tempest in teapot?

Why spend all the time and money calling a meeting of the licensing board and investigating it?

Must be a regular occurrence and the cops rightfully want to put an end to it.

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Or maybe it’s just a power play and some overly sensitive cop wants to stick it to someone who hurt his feelings.

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… people parking there is a regular occurrence despite his claim he tells his employees not to and says he reports it when he sees it.

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I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the cops decided to take this concern to the liquor board after someone swore at one of them over it.

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It’s only wrong when you get caught. They got caught this time.

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This time it was an employee, but I regularly see rideshare and meal delivery vehicles clogging that zone during the daytime hours.

Why should they be sanctioned for the behavior of idiots who think the parking laws don't apply to them because "I'm working!"?

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…. “In Boston, at any rate, bars and restaurants are responsible for what happens not just inside but immediately outside, and a no-parking spot right next to the bar patio would qualify, especially given that the driver in question was on duty at the bar at the time.”

If the restaurants are profiting from the illegal behavior of the ride share and meal delivery drivers, then they bear some responsibility for that behavior.

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If the restaurants are profiting from the illegal behavior of the ride share and meal delivery drivers, then they bear some responsibility for that behavior.

Seems like a stretch @Lee.

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Everyone knows the only people allowed to park in no parking zones are cops, city workers, ride share vehicles, delivery trucks, valets, and people who just had to run in for something.

/S

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… when he was mayor.

Postal workers too. I once asked one why his truck was parked in a Silver Line stop making it impossible for a passenger in a wheelchair chair to roll off the bus onto the sidewalk. “Because postal workers are exempt from parking rules.”, he informed me.

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This person.

I have no proof, but I did recently see a black SUV speed over the bridge at Cummins Highway with blue lights flashing travelling on the wrong side of the road, turn onto Hyde Park Avenue in the direction of, well, City Hall. The lights were turned off when the SUV got 3 blocks down the road. Kind of how Wu would get from home to work.

Never heard of Walsh's driver injuring people while on the road.

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Like cops don't have unmarked black SUVs in their fleet.

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Postal workers also have the right of way too. A fire truck, a police car, an ambulance and a USPS Mail Delivery vehicle meet at a 4-way intersection. The USPS vehicle has the right of way. It's a Federal thing.

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They actually do not.

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That was a thing when we learned driving in high school. Felt like an urban legend.

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Here's Snopes on the matter: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/four-play/

(Also, an emergency vehicle with sirens on is of course going to have priority. If sirens *aren't* on, I'm not sure if the vehicles even hold any special status at all!)

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Is telling a cop to go f themselves a specific license violation?

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The cop’s feelings were hurt. This necessitates immediate board action! /s

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Equals Mandatory Court Time (i.e. overtime).

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Hernandez is a full-time licensing detective (one of three in BPD), so attending licensing hearings is part of his regular job.

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Why on earth did BTD think it was a good idea to widen the sidewalk, but keep it level with the street with no curb, and install bollards but not enough of them to actually protect pedestrians? https://maps.app.goo.gl/2HtnFiLM7mU5QzG96

The signs say "no stopping", but the physical layout highly encourages people to park on the sidewalk.

Why couldn't they just install a standard-height curb, and bollards spaced closely enough to keep vehicles off the sidewalk?

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Likely for Emergency Vehicles - they tend to run a bit wider than your average truck. And they need space around them for accessing the different storage bits on the sides.

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Its ridiculous that Union Street isn't completely pedestrian only.

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To make it clear that the bar wasn't answering to a charge of public swearing, which is legal in Massachusetts, but to a citation for "employee parking vehicle in restricted no stopping zone," which is not legal in Massachusetts.

In Boston, at any rate, bars and restaurants are responsible for what happens not just inside but immediately outside, and a no-parking spot right next to the bar patio would qualify, especially given that the driver in question was on duty at the bar at the time.

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This was a parking violation.

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dang, you're right. I just now searched the first million rows of the _parking_ tickets public records for his badge number and found zero. So perhaps he writes even fewer parking tickets than moving violations?

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Uniformed police supervisors have been writing parking tickets in that area for a long time.

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Now enforce no parking at bus stops, construction employees and near unions when there is a big meeting. They park wherever the F they want around the Local 7 in Southie or the Teamsters Local 25 in Charlestown. Never any enforcement that I've seen.

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Churchies are the worst. Apparently you are allowed to break the law and endanger people as long as you sing silly songs from a book of fairy tales.

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Are not BMWs expensive transportation machines?

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*former restaurant worker.

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It was right around here, on Union Street. The owner parked her Rolls Royce in front and got a daily parking ticket.

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Road Pirate or Dumb ass employee ?

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