AMHERST – An Amherst restaurant found responsible for serving alcohol to minors twice this spring, after previously selling Scorpion Bowls to 17 underage drinkers last fall, will surrender its liquor license for 55 consecutive days beginning May 4.
The Select Board on Thursday voted unanimously to impose the license suspension after finding credible police reports about incidents in which underage people were served alcohol at Panda East, 103 North Pleasant St., on the evenings of March 26 and April 8.
The suspension includes five days the board deferred in January from a previous violation, when it found the restaurant responsible for the fall incident, and tacked on an additional 15 days for the second violation and 35 days for the third.
The first five days, starting May 4, will run through commencement weekend at the University of Massachusetts.
“That, in my opinion, would be extremely appropriate, because I think we were less strict than necessary when we gave them a Monday and Tuesday,” said Select Board Chairwoman Alisa Brewer.
The decision on which days to prohibit Panda East from selling alcohol came despite board member Douglas Slaughter’s initial suggestion to suspend the license from June 1 through the end of 2016.
“I think we do not want to tolerate this in our community, and we need to take serious action with respect to that,” Slaughter said.
The penalty should be severe because the violations are so egregious, said board member James Wald.
“I think there should be a very stiff penalty,” Wald said, noting that while there has been improvement at the restaurant, with procedures in place to examine identifications and the recent purchase of an ID scanner, these came “too little, too late.”
But Constance Kruger said even though these are serious incidents, she worried about putting Panda East out of business.
“I personally don’t want to take such an extreme measure that would jeopardize the livelihood of the establishment,” Kruger said.
The board’s decision came following police discoveries of the alleged liquor license violations.
Detective Sgt. Brian Daly said he began an investigation after a March 27 report that a 17-year-old girl had been served alcohol the previous night. That girl was taken by Amherst Fire Department ambulance to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton when she became ill on a PVTA bus after consuming alcohol.
Daly said he spoke to the girl by telephone two days later and she informed him that she and three teenage friends were served two rounds of Scorpion Bowls, a mixed drink with fruit juice, at Panda East, without being asked for IDs.
Police Chief Scott Livingstone said he talked to the mother, who was leaving the hospital with her daughter the morning of March 27, describing her as “upset and concerned.”
Livingstone acknowledged that the teen was a reluctant witness. “The 17-year-old was more concerned about her friends being in trouble, and refused at that time to tell me where she had been that evening,” Livingstone said.
Board member Andrew Steinberg said he cannot imagine the girl making up a story with so much specificity, including the name of the restaurant.
Slaughter agreed. “It seems unusual they would be as specific as they were without there being some truth to that,” Slaughter said.
Kruger said the allegation is alarming and serious, though there was no witness to the incident and the girl might be aware of Panda East’s reputation of serving minors.
“It’s very hard without having the evidence,” Kruger said.
Amherst attorney Kristin Bodin said there was no corroboration that this incident happened and no sales receipts for that night show two rounds of Scorpion Bowls were served to four individuals. Bodin also disputed the idea that no IDs were requested. Since the previous incident, the restaurant has a policy asking for everyone, no matter their age, to present a valid ID, she said.
“This is really hearsay,” Bodin said. “(There’s) nothing substantive that could support a violation.”
The second incident occurred on April 8, when Daly said he used four 20-year-old students to try to purchase alcohol, but they were denied service. After 9 p.m., he and Detective Michael Forcum went in the restaurant and did ID checks, and one underage female was found drinking from a Scorpion Bowl, having used a fake Rhode Island license. The other woman drinking from the same beverage had an expired Massachusetts license, but is 21, Daly said.
Bodin agree that this violation occurred. “We’ll admit we missed this one, and we’re sorry about that one,” Bodin said.
Amy Wu, manager and bartender at Panda East, said her staff has been trained in serving alcohol and just recently invested over $5,000 in a state-of-the-art scanner machine that she began using Monday. This will prevent future violations.
“The fake ID is truly very difficult for us if true or fake,” Wu said.
One fake ID was discovered by the scanner Wednesday, she added.
She also has confiscated alcohol from people coming into the restaurant, displaying three bottles in front of the Select Board.
“It’s like a war zone to keep these underaged kids from drinking alcohol,” Bodin said.
Livingstone said previous compliance checks in March at Panda East turned up no violations.
Brian Riley, an attorney with Kopelman and Paige in Boston, explained to the Select Board that Panda East will have an opportunity to appeal the penalty to the state’s Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
