The tragic shooting and Murder at the Zendejas Mexican Restaurant in Colton just a hop skip and a jump away from Grand Terrace should be a warning of the potential activity if there is allowed additional Bar Centered Restaurants in Grand Terrace in Particular in an area adjacent to residential homes.
Imagine if there are bullets firring in the proposed Town Square Development. Who will be in the line of fire, folks sleeping in their beds? Do Concrete walls stop all bullets? Will there be cars spraying bullets down Michigan as a Fight leaves the Parking lot and goes into the residential areas?
National Bars and clubs like Chilies, TGIF, and even the Non Chain Club Zendejas, Club 215 and the club on La Cadena have all been areas of violent crime. Knives and Guns and Alcohol seem to gravitate to the same places.
If the City Hall and the ABC Board approve such a facility in the Town Square the next thing the Planning Department may want to add to the city plan is a Cemetery for the Deaths caused by that source of much sought after "Income".
Watch carefully the businesses that are being included in the Town Square. We don't need our citizens to be at the Bars, nor do we need to invite this type of money and the expense it will bring to our community. We do not have the resources for the Law Enforcement for such activities, and the revenue generated will not cover the cost in money or lives.
Look at the number of arrests that are related to drug and alcohol use. Do we need to attract and nurture more of the same? I say no..
From the EMail InBox: Brian Adds His Opinion
I don't want the Town Centre to consist of a bunch of bars, etc either, but the previous poster's logic is flawed. A man was killed in his front yard on the same day as the Zendejas shooting. Should Grand Terrace ban all front yards. Should we ban cars due to a drive-by in San Bernardino. A shooting in Colton, San Bernardino, LA, or where ever, does not mean that it will happen here. Freedom means having choices. If I want to go to the town center, have a beer, and watch a game, I should have that option in Grand Terrace. The problem is not the bar...per se...its the people. Lets stop the hysterical hyperbole, shall we. "Will the brick wall stop all the bullets?" Give me a break! Just a thought.
Brian
From the Email InBox: Reply to Brian's Thoughts...
Brian’s logic… is the logic with the flaws. Of course front yards should not be banned as he suggests. His failure to accept the fact that the use of drugs and alcohol contributes to the majority of crime, violence and civil disturbances in our society is indicative of a person who is not wanting to assimilate available data. In addition the reality of the limited available law enforcement presence in Grand Terrace should further support a ban on any additional ABC Licenses issued in GT for any type of business, bars, restaurants, gas stations, or stores.
Brian, if you want to sit at a bar and watch a game, yes you have a right to do that in a town where they have adequate law enforcement to regulate the associated problems that come from it. A desire to not invite the associate problems of Bars, Alcohol Outlets and Increase Alcohol and Drug Consumption is in truth the prior writers point. Yes Brian You are right, People are the Problem. People who will be attracted to a Bar are the Problem. Their compromised thought process and behavior is the problem. Do we gain from opening up our small town to these added challenges for the “Benefit” of increased taxes? An empty field is better use of the property than a Bar of even the BEST People as Guests.
How about watching the game with an Iced Tea or do you NEED a BEER to enjoy yourself?
From the Email InBox:
Dear Gramps,
We already have a saturation point of Alcohol Sales Points in Our City. There is no need to locate another in Grand Terrace let alone near an Elementary School. Attached is an article that may be informative to Brian and to those who are even entertaining the idea of additional liquor sales points in GT or even transfering of existing licenses such as Stater Brothers to Town Square which is so close to the Elementary School. Sure you will no doubt hear from Brian, that the gas stations sell alcohol and they are closer to the school. Well, that is a case of false logic. The mix of Gas, Schools and Alcohol should not be acceptable to any of us. To add to something that is already not good just will make it worse.
Over the past quarter-century, Americans have spent billions of dollars to wage a war on drugs as part of a broader effort to fight crime and community breakdown, especially in the inner city.
The particular focus on illicit drugs, however, has kept the spotlight off a more familiar, yet perhaps more dangerous, psychoactive drug — alcohol. The tendency to leave liquor out of the nation's crime equation is understandable. After all, adult liquor sales are legal, most Americans drink in moderation, and, whatever the social costs of alcohol abuse, no one who wishes to be taken seriously is about to call for a return to prohibition. Policymakers concerned about the health of the nation's inner cities, however, must not ignore the links between alcohol and crime. Although the relationships are complex, the high concentration of liquor stores in the inner cities, the ready availability of beer and hard liquor, and the high incidence of alcohol abuse are deeply implicated in the troubled homes, disorderly neighborhoods, and dangerous streets there.
This insight comes as no news to the struggling, law-abiding residents who live in these neighborhoods. They beg local police and other public authorities to "do something" about the corner-to-corner proliferation of liquor outlets. They spray paint over liquor billboards. They try without success to get zoning laws changed to make it as tough to open retail liquor stores in their neighborhoods as it generally is to open them in rich, white, suburban neighborhoods.It is time for the rest of us, policymakers and citizens alike, to pay attention.
A Multiplier of Crime
Although scientific research on alcohol-related crime and other social ills has been crowded out by studies of the social costs and consequences of drug abuse, researchers are beginning to get a handle on the epidemiology of alcohol-related crime. Perhaps the single best summary of the evidence is this, by Jeffrey Fagan: "Alcohol use has been associated with assaultive and sex-related crimes, serious youth crime, family violence toward both spouses and children, being both a homicide victim and a perpetrator, and persistent aggression as an adult. Alcohol 'problems' occur disproportionately among both juveniles and adults who report violent behaviors."
Most crime, of course, is not related to drinking, and most drinking never results in crime. But some people are far more prone to crime and violence when they are drinking or drunk than when they are clean and sober. Analysts are careful to stress that "conceptions of how drinking affects social behavior are . . . shaped more by powerful cultural, economic, and political forces than by scientific evidence regarding the direct effects of alcohol." But exactly the same sorts of cautions apply to the links between drug abuse and crime. The evidence that "drug abuse causes crime" is of the same kind and quality as the evidence that "alcohol abuse causes crime"
— namely, plentiful but inferential, generally persuasive but not scientifically precise.
What the evidence suggests is that alcohol, like drugs, acts as a multiplier of crime. Aggressive behavior or criminality often occurs before involvement with drugs or alcohol, but the onset of use increases aggressive or criminal behavior. If anything, alcohol abuse probably drives crime and other social problems more than drug abuse does, simply because the use of alcohol is so widespread.
Liquor, Disorder, and Crime
Neighborhood disorder takes many forms — public drinking, prostitution, catcalling, aggressive panhandling, rowdy teenagers, battling spouses, graffiti, vandalism, abandoned buildings, trash-filled lots, alleys strewn with bottles and garbage. But no social disorder is at once so disruptive in its own right and so conducive of other disorders and crime as public drinking. In a classic 1990 study of community breakdown in American cities by William Skogan, public drinking was ranked first among the disorders identified by residents across 40 neighborhoods.
The statistics are striking. Sixty percent of convicted homicide offenders drank just before committing the offense. Sixty-three percent of adults jailed for homicide had been drinking before the offense. Sixty percent of prison inmates drank heavily just before committing the violent crime for which they were incarcerated. The relationship between poverty and homicide is stronger in neighborhoods with higher rates of alcohol consumption than in those with average or below-average rates. Numerous studies report a strong association between sexual violence and alcohol, finding that "anywhere between 30 and 90 percent of convicted rapists are drunk at the time of offense." Juveniles, especially young men, who drink to the point of drunkenness are more likely than those who do not drink to get into fights, get arrested, commit violent crimes, and recidivate later in life. Alcohol-dependent male factory workers are more than three times as likely to physically abuse their wives than are otherwise comparable, non-alcohol-dependent counterparts.
The high incidence of drinking among convicted criminals does not necessarily prove that drinking stimulates crime; it may be nearer to being evidence that criminals who drink are more likely to get caught and convicted than those who do not. But it is important not to discount or deny the probable, and in some cases patently obvious, connections between liquor, disorder, and crime.
Alcohol in the Inner City
The map shown in figure 1 illustrates the relationship between liquor and crime in Milwaukee in 1993. The map categorizes each city tract according to its crime rate; the darker the shading, the higher the crime rate. Each dot represents a liquor outlet. If one knew nothing about the city or what the shaded areas or dots represent and simply drew circles around the places where the dots are clustered, Milwaukee's poor, minority, high-crime, inner-city neighborhoods would be enclosed in those circles. And the same pattern is true for other inner-city communities all across the country.
Numerous first-rate studies have found close links between the geographic density of alcohol outlets and consumption (and alcohol problem) rates. Without leaping to the further conclusion that if inner-city neighborhoods had fewer liquor outlets and less alcohol consumption, they would also have less crime, policymakers who care about reducing community breakdown and crime in the inner city should nevertheless seriously consider restricting alcohol availability and reducing the density of liquor stores.
The practical question is how best to do so. The main finding of the scientific research literature is that more strongly enforcing liquor law regulations can reduce alcohol availability and consumption, as well as alcohol-related problems, including violent crime, among at-risk youth and adults.
Most states do not have strong liquor-law regulations and procedures. Even states that have them on the books tend to underfund the agencies responsible for enforcing them. Naturally, anemic funding often leads to inadequate enforcement, which opens up the possibility of socially harmful concentrations of liquor outlets and other regulatory failures that can lead to a hornet's nest of alcohol-related social problems.
Developing and enforcing rigorous liquor laws and regulations that might cut crime and alcohol-related problems in poor, minority, high-crime inner-city neighborhoods has not been a high priority for most states. To put it bluntly, America's liquor-control regime is structured without any apparent regard for the connection between alcohol availability, consumption, crime, and other social problems — and is calculated to give the states almost zero capacity to regulate and directly enforce liquor laws. A study of ABC offices and investigators in California, for example, found that investigators were "less concerned with public health and welfare than with the rights of applicants." The study concluded that selling alcohol in California "is treated more as a right than a privilege."
In their new book, Alcohol and Homicide, R. N. Nash and L. A. Rebhun observe, rightly, that the high concentration of liquor outlets in inner-city neighborhoods reflects "the relative power of alcohol producers and wholesalers who supply liquor outlets, banks who loan money to store owners, and state regulators whose activities are more oriented toward the interests of alcohol industry lobbying groups than the regulation of that industry and the relative powerlessness of the poor and unemployed individuals and groups who live in greater concentration in these areas of high outlet density."
Middle-class Americans would not tolerate for one second laws that permitted an inner-city level concentration of liquor stores in and around the places where they and their loved ones live, work, shop, go to school, or play. It makes no sense to insist that it is all merely a matter of free markets, as if liquor stores simply go where the people want what they sell and sell to whomever they want. Nor can one hide behind a fog of empirical uncertainties about the connections between liquor, disorder, and crime. In the end, academic statistical exercises are no substitute for live ethnographic realities. A 1993 feature in U.S. News and World Report reported on that reality from the perspective of a typical inner-city child named John. "To John, Tom's Liquor is a short walk from his house, school and the storefront church in the same shopping strip. A slew of transactions take John to Tom's. He tags along with
his mom when she goes to cash her welfare checks free of charge. With no supermarket nearby, John goes to Tom's when he wants a candy bar. Even when his mother takes him to the adjoining neighborhoods, John rarely sees a bank or
supermarket. Many neighborhood traits convey disorder, but unchecked public drinking is a particularly potent affirmation that 'no one cares.' That is the
message John gains by observing Tom's Liquor, where winos and crack addicts congregate at night in the parking lot."
Some years ago James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling offered a by-now almost universally accepted "broken windows" thesis —Preserving Social Capital
States and cities should begin immediately to experiment with policies aimed at cutting crime by curbing alcohol availability and consumption. The place to start is in high-crime neighborhoods where the density of liquor outlets exceeds citywide averages. The theory behind this experiment should be guided by the large and methodologically sophisticated body of research that documents that in inner-city neighborhoods, the relationship between poverty on the one side and crime and disorder on the other is mediated by community norms and the extent of citizens' attachments to traditional institutions like home, school, and church.
As a rule, the stronger are community norms and traditional institutional attachments, the weaker the link between poverty and crime and the lower the chances that poor children will become deviant, delinquent, or predatory. Studies have shown that religious affiliation fosters less drinking. Indeed, one major study finds that even after controlling for all relevant individual characteristics such as race, gender, education, parental education, family structure, and religious involvement, young people whose neighbors attend church are more likely to find a job, less likely to use drugs, and less likely to be involved in criminal activities whether or not they themselves attend church or have other attachments to traditional institutions.
But in poor neighborhoods where alcohol is readily available and liquor outlets dot every intersection, informal and indirect social controls on deviant, delinquent, and criminal behavior are diluted. Where broken bottles fill the gutters, social capital goes down the drain. Whether or not they themselves drink to excess, hang out at bars, or engage directly in related behaviors, it is probable that poor, inner-city youths who grow up in places where drinking is common and liquor outlets are everywhere are more likely than otherwise comparable youths to have diminished life prospects that include joblessness, substance abuse, and serious trouble with the law.
At least three specific policy experiments should be considered as means of deepening our understanding of the alcohol-disorder-crime nexus. First, conduct systematic empirical research on alcohol availability and crime. Develop a rich
database that includes detailed information about the precise degrees of spatial overlap between liquor outlets, the incidence of communal disorders, rates of
criminal activity, and the frequency of police response. Building such data sets would require the concerted efforts and cooperation of many different state and local agencies, including police departments and social service agencies.
Second, impose stricter zoning ordinances for liquor stores. New zoning laws would increase the distances between liquor stores, reduce the number of bars and liquor stores in the city, and ban the sale of malt liquor to go.
Third, limit alcoholic beverage advertising. Few systematic, scientifically rigorous studies have documented the relationship between alcohol ads and the incidence of excessive drinking, disorder, crime, and related social problems.But the alcohol industry seems to believe that these ads make a positive difference to their sales. Indeed, the industry seems perfectly well aware of the relationship between alcohol, disorder, and crime — and in some infamous cases has been quick to exploit it for commercial gain. In the early 1990s, for example, one of the billboarded spokesmen for St. Ides malt liquor was Ice Cube, a "gangsta rapper" whose hits feature lyrics such as "Pay respect to the black fist or we'll burn your store right down to a crisp."
Religious leaders in black communities often paint over offensive billboards. City officials should follow their lead by enforcing zoning limitations on billboard alcohol advertising, banning such ads from the horizons of schools, churches, and public housing centers.
One policy experiment that should be avoided at all costs is lowering the legal drinking age. The drinking-disorder-crime nexus seems strongly age-specific. Most violent crime is committed by young males. Drinking in males normally begins around adolescence and rises until the late teens or mid-twenties. Research suggests that the relationship between drinking and serious crime is strongest before young men reach age 31.
In a word, states should refuse to enact any measure that would increase alcohol consumption and particularly consumption among young people. Unless one simply refuses to accept the overwhelming weight of the evidence on the relationship between drinking, disorder, and crime, one must believe that reducing the minimum drinking age or any other measure that would increase, rather than further limit, the availability of alcohol would have socially undesirable, even disastrous, consequences — most especially in America's inner-city neighborhoods.
Thanks. Lets Count how many places in GT Sell Alcohol:
CVS "Drug Store", Taco Villa, Starbucks(Yes) Some of their "Flavors" are alcohol based, Chevron, GT Liquor, Stater Brothers, Bonellos, Tie Resturant, TJ's Bar (Or what ever it's new name is), Food Connection, Stop and Go Market, ARCO, GTMarket, Quick Market near Demetri's.
That is 16 places in a town of less than 13,000 people. Is the Shell Station going to add Alcohol Sales? That would be 17. Add a replacement for Stater Brothers Mkt wanting a liquor license and that will be 18. They Booze Zone From Mt. Vernon and Barton Rd, to Barton Rd and the 214 has all but one of the outlets for alcohol. This is a saturation zone already. Adding a Bar or Resturant that serves alcohol will just further flood this area and the community.
Three points of sale would be across the street from the GT Elm School. Even letting Stater's Relocate its license may need to be reviewed with CAUTION. Do we need a Biger Liquor Section as Jack Brown promoted as being a feature of the new store? If there are to be additional points of sale in the Town Center as suggested a Chili's Bar and Grill or an additional "Drug Store that sales Liquor", we are pre programing our children to accept consumption of alcohol just by its prevalance and its location.
Brian, you can keep your front yard. But, the community may want to think about additional locations for you to have your beer and watch the Game. The community may also want to think about how many places you have available to purchase your beer. Beer Drinking is not a RIGHT, it is a regulated activity. There is significant reason and justification for that regulation so the orriginal post was not flawed in its logic Brian. Yes Brian you have the ability to go sit in a Bar and watch the game, just not in this town.
Gramps Please Post:
First off..I don't routinely drink. Not even socially. I probably have 3-4 beers per YEAR, if that. My point is not that I need a beer to watch a game. My point is that if a person does want a beer to watch a game...that should be an option. Do you not understand that to mandate that someone "drink Iced Tea" instead of beer is not freedom. This is true no mater how distasteful you may find it. One of the marks of an open mind is to be able to accept that people like and do different things, even though you may find them distasteful
I agree with most all of the content of the articles that you've provided. I see the consequences of alcohol ABUSE...not simple consumption...ABUSE every singe day. I'm buried in it and don't need that lecture. Everything can increase crime if abused. Guns, baseball bats, cars..everything. Establishments such as Chili's cannot be lumped in the same category as a corner liquor store in South Central Los Angeles. The articles dealt almost exclusively with off-sale liquor outlets in poor/high crime neighborhoods. Chili's is not an off-sale liquor outlet and Grand Terrace is not a high crime neighborhood. Alcohol does not create crime...it can enhance it in an otherwise violent person. The non-violent surgical technician or engineer who goes to Chili's is no more likely to commit a crime after a beer than he was before that beer. The fact remains though that we, as a society, have decided that alcohol is legal and acceptable. We tried prohibition once. It didn't work and increased crime dramatically.
"The types" of people who will go to a Chili's are ordinary Grand Terrace Citizens. For you or anyone to assume that our residents can't handle a restaurant that serves beer, and that they will start beating and shooting one another is absurd. You treat us like children who need to be regulated at every turn, lest we go crazy and fall prey to the evils of the big bad world. Remember..we're all different and we all like different things.
Brian
Dear Gramps Please Post:
Brian suggests that the City of Grand Terrace and the ABC board have no regulatory reason to justify not inviting a Chili’s Type Bar and Grill to Grand Terrace. His statement
“One of the marks of an open mind is to be able to accept that people like and do different things, even though you may find them distasteful”. Is a contradiction to his prior support of the City Council, and shows continued flawed logic and true concern for his family and yours.
The mayor and council find speakers speaking longer than 3 minutes a bother to the flow of the City Council Meetings. The City Council and the City won’t let you have a chicken in your yard where the County Regulation would allow 6 chickens and one rooster. I can go on and on how the City Regulates the lives of people they find “distasteful”, right down to who gets to park an RV and what kind of RV can be parked on private property. So Brian, lets be Fair and get rid of all City Regulations including the one that allows Fireworks when the County Does Not, but ABC Board May still say no to additional Alcohol Distribution Points as State Regulations are at their limit as it now stands.
Chili’s Bar and Grill would not serve only Grand Terrace Residents as Brian wants the reader to believe. Chilie’s, TGIF, OutBack, and so forth are not Neighborhood Restaurants, they are Destination Restaurants that will invite many people from outside of Grand Terrace to Grand Terrace for the sole purpose of Getting Drunk with Friends. His suggestion that is not the fact of the business plan he is seriously delusional.
Yes the study sighted was about South Central LA. We are just about ready to pattern our business district in the same way. Brian’s suggestion that it won’t happen here is like those who say 50% of Drugs are Used in the City, and ignore that the other 50% are used in towns like Grand Terrace or on farms in Iowa.
I invite anyone interested in what a Chili’s will bring to GT to visit any of them on a busy night and see if you want that near your home and school.
The fact is that alcohol is regulated, its distribution is regulated, and part of that regulation limits the number of permits to distribute and sell to 600 feet of a school, church, or pre existing license. It also limits it to one per one thousand people. In Grand Terrace that would be 12 places of distribution, we have 17 now. We have DUI, and Domestic Violence sufficient to keep our Sheriff busy. What the Regulation of Alcohol does not do is cause the Sellers to Compensate the City, and Victims of its consumption for the damages and expenses incurred. If each alcohol license also paid for a Law Enforcement Officer each, and Medical and Property Insurance for all incidences where alcohol has contributed to the cause of injury or damage, perhaps you could justify the inclusion of a Chili’s in a development which is being built on a project so entangled with the Redevelopment Agency.
"The types of people who will go to a Chili's are ordinary Grand Terrace Citizens”. Ordinary Grand Terrace Citizens and those who drive through our town are weekly arrested for intoxication and public intoxication, and DUI and Drug Charges. There is no need to increase neither the availability nor the suggested acceptance of the use of alcohol in GT.
