Board puts Uphams Corner bar on notice over machete slicing the bar denied happened inside but the board concluded did

The Boston Licensing Board voted yesterday to suspend the license of the Dublin Pub, 7 Stoughton St. in Dorchester, for one day over the way a patron was sliced with a machete last August - but then voted to hold the punishment in abeyance until the end of August to give the bar a chance to prove it's taking steps to keep it from happening again.

That will include having to file a detailed security and operations plan for consideration by the board at a hearing on March 26, the board said.

At a hearing last month, the pub's owners and head of security said they didn't realize anything had happened inside until police showed up en masse after the victim showed up at Boston Medical Center - and patrons spilling outside onto Stoughton Street began getting into a series of fights.

Board members said yesterday they didn't buy that for a second, in part because the victim himself testified last month he had been sliced in the arm inside the bar, as part of an argument he wasn't part of, in part because a police officer testified she found a pool of blood - with the imprint of a shoe in it - that looked like somebody had been trying to mop up when police arrived shortly after 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 29.

Board member Liam Curran said he saw "a purposeful decision try to cover this up."

Board members added they were particularly concerned that when the police did arrive, they at first had some trouble getting admittance to the bar - which by then had closed for the night, but employees were still inside - and then didn't get much cooperation from bar employees, some of whom stayed glued to their phones even in the middle of what had turned into a stabbing investigation.

"They should have known something happened inside," board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce said. And even if, as bar managers testified last month, they thought the stabbing was outside, that it involved patrons on the sidewalk right outside their doors, they should have called police, because premises are responsible for patrons on the sidewalk outside as well, she said.

Just as bad, though, she added, if, as police and the witness said, the stabbing happened inside, that is troubling as well, she said: "If your staffing model is such that you don't know a stabbing has occurred, there's a real problem there for the other patrons."

"Other patrons could have been seriously hurt that night and they're lucky no one else was injured," she said, adding that "everything stemmed from the lack of security and the lack of cooperation [with police]."

Police had cited the bar for five violations: Assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (machete), patron on patron assault and battery (the stabbing), failure to keep loiterers from the sidewalk in front of the bar's entrance and failure to notify police of a serious incident.