Uphams Corner bar bouncer loses job after she sprays rowdy customer and friend with mace

A bouncer at the Dublin Pub, 7 Stoughton St. in Dorchester's Uphams Corner, lost her job after she pulled out some mace she wasn't supposed to have and used it to subdue an irate woman trying to barge back into the joint after being kicked out, bar managers and its attorney, told the Boston Licensing Board at a hearing this week.

Police cited the bar for assault and battery, patron on employee, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (mace) by an employee on a patron and having armed security without board approval.

At a hearing yesterday, however, the board voted "no violation" on all three, because the bouncer was carrying her own personal mace without permission from her employers at a private security company and she was promptly fired.

According to testimony from police and a manager at the security company hired by the bar, also known as Dublin House, trouble began at closing time, around 1:20 a.m., on April 14, when bar workers and bouncers from a third-party security company were clearing patrons out. Then one patron, a girlfriend of one of the bouncers, spotted the bouncer's manager, with whom she had long had beef.

"She has had a problem with him over the years," bar attorney William Gardiner told the board. She got in his face, began pushing and shoving him and eventually pulled his beard, Gardiner and the manager told the board.

The bouncers managed to separate her and the manager and get her and a friend of hers out the door and onto Stoughton Street. But then she tried to rush back in, and grabbed onto the door to keep workers from closing it, at which point a woman bouncer got out her can of mace and sprayed the charging woman in the face to keep her from getting back inside. The friend also got sprayed.

The tactic worked - police arrived not long after to find the two women outside, their swollen eyes shut from the affect of the pepper spray - but the bouncer should not have been packing mace, she decided on her own to show up to work with it, Gardiner said. Mace is considered a weapon and while security guards at bars and restaurants can carry them, the establishments have to notify the board first. The bar has not asked for such permission.

The board concluded the bar could not have foreseen the bouncer would take it upon herself to show up to work with mace and that, by firing her, it had acted properly.

The bar was last before the licensing board in February, to answer a police citation for the way a patron sliced another patron with a machete.