Sophie Sonnenfeld photo
At EastCoastin 2021 in the Annex.
Thomas Breen file photo
Bike life event organizers Sal Fusco and Gabe Canestri.
The Elicker Administration has filed suit against the organizers of the “EastCoastin 2021” motorcycle event in a bid to collect on roughly $92,000 worth of police, public works, and traffic employee overtime spent on last year’s unpermitted Annex gathering.
Mayor Justin Elicker announced that newly filed legal action during a Tuesday morning press conference held on the second floor of City Hall.
Standing alongside Police Chief Karl Jacobson, city Corporation Counsel Patricia King, and Assistant Corporation Counsels Blake Sullivan and Michael Pinto, Elicker said that the city has filed a civil lawsuit in state court against five defendants associated with EastCoastin 2021.
That annual unpermitted event, held on Sept. 25 of last year, saw thousands of people descend on the city’s industrial waterfront to watch and participate as motorcyclists took over Waterfront Street and did wheelies, burnouts, donuts, and other stunts.
According to Sullivan, the city spent roughly $80,000 on police overtime and roughly $12,000 on public works and traffic employee overtime during the event.
“This event was extremely dangerous,” Jacobson said during Tuesday’s presser. “This was not good for our city. … We are hoping this [lawsuit] prohibits the next one.”
Mayor Elicker and City Assistant Corporation Counsel Sullivan on Tuesday.
The lawsuit alleges that the five defendants involved in putting together last year’s event — Gabriel Canestri, Jr., Salvatore Fusco, East Coastin Entertainment LLC, East Coastin Enterprises LLC, and C&D Investments LLC — each violated a state law requiring event organizers to pay for police protection at “places of amusement.”
The lawsuit also claims that those same five defendants broke the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) by profiting from last year’s EastCoastin while evading the costs associated with hosting a legal, permitted city event.
“The defendants planned and organized EastCoastin’ 2021 as an illegal, unpermitted event, disregarding the risks to public safety and to the administrative costs and burdens the City would and did incur from controlling and policing the event and its attendees,” the lawsuit reads.
It continues: “The actions of the defendants and their agents caused the City to incur significant monetary costs to provide police protection and public safety for EastCoastin’ 2021.”
The lawsuit asks the court to grant the city an unspecified amount in “money damages,” as well as compensatory damages pursuant to state law 7 – 284, compensatory damages pursuant to state law 42 – 110a, costs and attorney’s fees and punitive damages pursuant to 42 – 110a, and equitable relief.
“Because of the scale of this event, which involved over 5,000 spectators and riders from all over the country,” Sullivan said during Tuesday’s press conference, and “after weeks of planning and publicizing the event after warnings not to do so, they went ahead and did this. It required extraordinary resources on behalf of the city’s police department, DPW, traffic and parking, and other city departments. The ‘public amusement’ statute is designed to recoup those costs.”
Click here and here to read the lawsuit in full, which the city filed last Friday.
Thomas Breen photo
Canestri with his lawyer Richard Tropiano, Jr. in court in December for a related criminal case.
The civil lawsuit comes roughly 9 months after Canestri pleaded nolo contendere to a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment for his role in organizing and promoting the unpermitted event. That plea means that Canestri could go to prison if he “solicits, organizes, holds or participates in” any unpermitted motorcycle events in the city over the next three years.
Canestri, who has been organizing EastCoastin motorcycle events for years, did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.
Click here for a previous article in which Canestri and Fusco described the annual motorcycle event as one of safe and controlled “joy.” They also said at the time that they tried to work with the city and the police on making the event legal and permitted, but that they never got a clear answer from the city on what they needed to make the event legit. The mayor and the then-acting police chief said at the time that they had spoken with the organizers for months, had pointed them toward how to pull the appropriate permit, and that the organizers dragged their feet and failed to do so.