The City of Boston’s Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing heard the cases of two bars Monday that are often frequented by Boston University students that had incidents of assault and battery charges.
The Bijou Nightclub and Julep Bar testified at City Hall, and the Office determined that future hearings would be needed for both respective incidents.
Julep Bar was charged with employee-on-patron assault and battery.
Representatives who, according to Patricia Malone, director of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing, were “notified of the hearing,” were not present. Malone started their hearing with only a police report to be read.
Two bouncers at Julep Bar threw a patron out of the bar by grabbing him by the shirt and throwing him onto the sidewalk, according to the report.
The reporting officer read from the report that the customer was acting out of control at the establishment, causing there to be a need for the patron to be escorted out of the building.
The patron had a small scrape on his head, but no serious injuries. When offered by police, the patron refused an ambulance. After four minutes, the hearing for Julep Bar was concluded.
Jamie Giorgio, head of security of the nightclub’s 13-person security staff and rising general manager of Bijou, then took the stand to talk about their own nightclub’s incident, also a patron-on-patron assault and battery.
The incident occurred at about 12:45 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2013, when contact between two intoxicated patrons escalated into a fistfight. The aggressor was not cooperative with the police, who arrived at the scene shortly after the altercation began.
“He was very aggressive,” Giorgio said. “We walked him out, and when we got out the main door, we basically just handed him over to the detail officer.”
After being escorted to the street, the aggressor was found bleeding from his nose. Bijou staff was notified by radio and word of mouth, the main forms of communication between security and other nightclub employees, according to the police statement.
“Security had this gentleman and noticed he was bleeding a little bit and made sure the detail met him at the main door,” Giorgio said. “We made sure he had towels and that 911 was called.”
Giorgio recalled being 10 feet away from the incident, which happened on the third floor of the downtown nightclub. Also present were the three owners of the nightclub, who verified that security staff upheld their established policy of calling 911.
At the hearing, it was determined that a venue as large as Bijou — with multiples usable floors — will use active ownership, rather than relying on the security staff for these kinds of instances, so that if something were to occur there would be more bodies around.
Both venues will be returning to City Hall for future hearings to determine what further actions will be taken.
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