Chicken on the cutting board?

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor

SPRINGFIELD If it were up to City Councilors Domenic Sarno and Bruce Stebbins, there would be one less restaurant in the city's entertainment district the Main Street location of Kennedy Fried Chicken.

At Friday's meeting of the Public Safety and Health City Council subcommittee , Sarno said that, at least, the restaurant needs to have its hours of operation decreased and must be required to hire off-duty police.

At one point, Sarno turned to Board of License Commisioners Chair Peter Sygnator and called for a decision to close the restaurant the site of a shooting incident in which one person was killed and five wounded last week.

Because the restaurant had not renewed its current common victualer's license, city officials were able to temporary close the restaurant last week.

Stebbins declared that he didn't care if the restaurant ever re-opened and also joined Sarno in asking Sygnator not to renew the license.

"Let's cut out a cancer right now," Stebbins said.

Whether or not Kennedy Fried Chicken on Main Street will be allowed to re-open will fall to the Board of License Commissioners at its Jan. 11 meeting slated for 5:30 p.m. in Room 220 of Springfield City Hall.

At that meeting the owners of the Main Street restaurant may be applying for the common victualer's license that they have allowed to elapse. Technically, at the time of the shootings, the restaurant should not have been open, city officials revealed on Tuesday at a press conference in Mayor Charles Ryan's office.

The restaurant did not have proper fire inspection certificates and is behind on its city taxes, as well.

Reminder Publications called Joseph Lussier, the Worcester attorney who is representing the owners of the restaurant. When asked if his clients were going to re-apply for the license, he said, "We'll find out on Jan. 11th."

Asked if that statement meant "no comment," Lussier said, "Yes," and hung up the phone.

Sarno said the owners and their attorney had been asked to attend the Jan. 5th meeting, but did not come.

"If they don't want to show up, then the boom has to be lowered," Sarno said.

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There are few controls a city has over restaurants in matters such as this one, Sygnator told the city councilors. While the state has numerous regulations over establishments that are licensed to sell alcohol, the city's Board of License Commissioners can only made recommendations to restaurants on food matters.

Sygnator said the Board had been able to amend the restaurant's hours, but could only suggest the owners install a security camera system and hire off-duty police officers.

Police Commissioner Edward Flynn said conditions at the restaurant became so bad that no officers wanted to take the assignment.

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Flynn explained at the City Council meeting on Jan. 6 that in the two and a half years Kennedy Fried Chicken has been in business on Main Street there have been 143 police calls to the location.

Flynn said that reviewing the date from July 6 to Dec. 31, 2006, 23 percent of all of the calls in the E-1 policing sector downtown have come from within a block of the Kennedy Fried Chicken location.

Flynn said that while the entertainment district "represents a certain amount of economic development," the area does not need attractions to keep people there after the bars close.

Kennedy Fried Chicken had originally been open until 4 a.m. After review by the Board of License Commissioners, the hours were shortened to 2:30 a.m. There is one other restaurant open after closing time in the entertainment district Mezzanotte Pizzera on Worthington Street and Flynn said although there have been problems there they have not been the same number or seriousness as those at Kennedy Fried Chicken.

Kennedy Fried Chicken is a problem, but a symptom, Flynn said. He called the restaurant "an attractive nuisance."

Flynn said that while police sweeps through the area in which groups of people are stopped to be searched might look good on television, tactics such as that could alienate city residents rather than solve the problem.

He said much of the violence today is very personal between specific people.

"What we are dealing with takes time and patience," he said.

His biggest concern is the "culture of silence." No one at the scene of the violence last week is willing to work with police.

"Everyone's a tough guy. No one is going to tell who did it," he added.

Flynn is working with Hampden Country Sheriff Michael Ashe on a program in which inmates returning to Springfield on parole are introduced to the officers working on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift. A face-to-face meeting is better than a mug shot, he said.

"They leave a little smaller than they came in," he said.

Flynn also said that he is "about a month-and-a-half away" from making a decision to prohibit his officers from accepting extra duty assignments in the entertainment district at specific clubs. He said his objection is the officers become armed bouncers rather than police officers and they would be much more effective patrolling outside than standing inside.

He would like to see a program in which the clubs that normally pay for the off-duty officers contribute to a fund that would pay for these officers to patrol the streets of the entertainment district.

After the meeting, Chris Castellano, the operations manager for the Springfield Business Improvement District (BID), said that he sees the potential for quicker responses to problems with such a use of officers, and there is a possibility that BID members might be interested in it.

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After the Tuesday press conference, City Councilor Timothy Rooke told Reminder Publications that he and other members of the City Council have been working on an ordinance that would require any business owner in the city with a special permit or a license who has four police calls to his or her premises within a year to come before the City Council and the Board of License Commissioners to explain what is happening at the business.

Rooke said the proposed ordinance is not a reaction to the Kennedy Fried Chicken shooting, but rather something the Council has been working on for some time.