[R]UTLAND — A former bar owner who claimed the city had used discriminatory police tactics that forced him to shut down his business has dropped his lawsuit with no money exchanging hands.
The city, in court filings, denied the allegations raised in the lawsuit, contending there is no proof any action by the police department led to the demise of the downtown bar, known as The Local.
The two sides, Rutland City and Charles Greeno, the bar owner, filed a joint one-paragraph motion in federal court in Vermont this week termed a “stipulation for dismissal” of the lawsuit.
Judge Geoffrey Crawford on Friday approved that joint motion that states the lawsuit is “dismissed with prejudice, and each side is to bear his/their attorney’s fees and costs.” Dismissing a case with prejudice means that it cannot be refiled.
Greeno referred comment Friday to his attorney, Matthew Hart of Rutland. Hart did not return repeated calls Friday seeking comment.
Rutland City Attorney Matthew Bloomer issued a statement late Friday on behalf of the Police Chief Brian Kilcullen and Rutland City Mayor David Allaire.
The statement read, “We are pleased that the stipulation of dismissal with prejudice has been filed, as we did not believe that the claim had merit.”
Neither Allaire or Kilcullen returned phone calls Friday seeking comment.
The city had submitted a motion asking the judge to throw out the litigation brought by Greeno. That motion was pending prior to the dismissal of the case this week.
An earlier mediation session failed to achieve a settlement.
Greeno filed the lawsuit is federal court in March 2017, shortly after closing the nightclub’s doors.
According to his complaint, Greeno opened The Local in 2011 and the business was operating well until a year later when the police department began targeting African-Americans at the establishment.
Police claimed the stepped up enforcement was due to patrons dealing drugs, an allegation that Greeno has contested.
The nightclub, described in Greeno’s lawsuit as a place that played dance music and “caters to the hip hop culture” featuring DJs from New York and Boston, often attracting African-American patrons from around the area.
However, according to the lawsuit, an ever-increasing police presence outside the bar, often with cruisers parked with their blue lights flashing, was keeping people away.
The city, in its initial response to the lawsuit last year, cited several defenses to the allegations raised by Greeno, including the “exercise of policing function for public safety.”
The bar not only drew the attention of the police department, by the state Department of Liquor Control as well.
Decisions from the state Liquor Control Board had been issued regarding The Local leading up to its demise.
In one case, which took place outside the bar, a man who had left the nightclub threatened others with a chainsaw. The drew a 21-day suspension of the bar’s liquor license..
Also, only days after the nightclub closed, the Liquor Control Board revoked the liquor licenses for The Local, effective March 1, 2017. The board also issued a $5,000 fine. According to the board, that decision involved others incidents, including fighting inside the bar and the over-serving of an off-duty bartender on her birthday.
Hart has said in previous interviews that a major reason why the Liquor Control Board came down so hard on The Local was at the “behest” of the city police as they sought to shut down the establishment.
The city has disputed that contention.
Kaveh Shahi, a Rutland attorney representing the city, wrote in the filing seeking to throw out the lawsuit that Greeno was provided with paperwork regarding thousands of incident reports from the city police connected to The Local.
“Mr. Greeno acknowledged having reviewed 3,700 plus pages of police incident reports produced in discovery to him for the years in question involving The Local but claimed most were unrelated,” Shahi wrote. “By way of example of the type of incident Mr. Greeno considered to be unrelated, an intoxicated female customer was taken from The Local by male customers and raped.”
After The Local closed, a different owner later attempted to open a new bar at the same. However, the city Board of Aldermen denied the request for a liquor license.
The location remains vacant.
