Westbound Bar, 24 Station Street, Suite 106 appeared at the Chattanooga Beer Board meeting Thursday morning to defend against the charge that the business is operating a disorderly place and telephone violations for not using a landline to report a disorder. Sergeant Jason Wood, beer inspector, said that police were notified of a fight by a bar across Station Street.
An email was sent to Sgt.
Wood to notify him that a fight had taken place on Station Street. The bar sending the email felt that they were being targeted, said Sgt. Wood, and they wanted the Beer Board to know “it happens in other bars.”
The accusation was that a fight had started inside the bar and spilled out into the street on Feb. 19. By the time the bar was made aware of the fight, the video surveillance from cameras inside the bar had erased what happened that night, but the accusing bar gave police films from their cameras showing a fight on the street.
Michael Hardin, manager of Westbound, told the beer board that night, by the time he knew a fight had happened, there was already a security officer from the Chattanooga Choo Choo there breaking it up, and no call was made to notify the police that a disorder took place. Mr. Hardin said that the two friends had come to the bar together and later left together while talking. A fight between the friends started outside.
Board members questioned why the narrative in the police report did not match the video, without a definitive answer. The video from Feb. 18 provided by the bar across the street does not show a fight starting inside Westbound. And none of the videos showed where the men came from before the fight. The manager said it was around 2 a.m. and the bar was in the process of closing. Employees were moving everything inside, so the security guard who is usually outside was not there. There was no evidence that the fight started inside.
A motion passed to put a letter of reprimand in the bar’s file for the violation of “failure to report a disorder to police.” The other charge of operating a disorderly place was dismissed on a unanimous vote.