Still from video presented at liquor control hearing, capturing customers entering employee counter area.
The owner of a trouble-spot liquor store made a pitch about the challenges he faces with sometimes violent customers — and some promises to improve his operation — in hopes of keeping his liquor permit in the face of neighborhood opposition.
That happened at an online continued second hearing held Thursday by the Liquor Control Commission, which is deciding on whether to renew the license of Paramount Liquor at Whalley and Winthrop Avenues.
During the first hearing on March 10, neighbors spent hours testifying against the renewal with complaints about the store disrupting the neighborhood’s quality of life for business owners, residents, and customers. (Read a previous story here discussing similar neighborhood complaints.)
Commission hearing Thursday afternoon.
Commissioners John McKinney and Dominic Balletto Thursday heard testimony from Paramount owner Hasmukh “Harry” Patel and his attorney Kevin Smith. Their main argument was that the liquor store’s location is already on a block prone to loitering. They added that despite Patel’s frequent communication with the New Haven Police Department (NHPD), disruptive and violent customers he reports to authorities are often released an hour after arrest for misdemeanors, and return to continue causing harm.
Patel testified he and his employees have received death threats from violent customers after the store has called the police for help.
Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hills (WEB) Community Management Team Chair Nadine Horton said she drives by the store everyday and witnesses problems involving quality of life, health, and violence. After attempting to work with improving the store’s issues over the past seven years, Horton said, she feels there is “no seeming accountability or responsibility from Mr. Patel to work with neighbors to address issues caused.”
Horton is the acting agent for the remonstrance on behalf of the WEB community.
Horton presented the commission with three spreadsheets documenting neighborhood calls made to the police over incidents within a 250-foot radius of the store over the past three years.
The documents show calls have been made from the store to the police over incidents like unwanted trespassing, theft, and loitering. The data from 2019 – 2021 show a total of 448 calls made over the years.
While testifying, Patel said he has owned the liquor store for 24 years. He opens at 8 a.m. and closes at 9 p.m. six days a week. Patel denied testimony from the previous hearing that the store has sometimes opened early or closed later than the scheduled hours.
In response to complaints about the store knowingly serving intoxicated customers, Patel said that practice is not the custom, but “I don’t know how I know who’s intoxicated or not,” he stated.
He added that most recently when the store’s employees identified a customer as intoxicated, they refused to serve him — so the customer had a friend buy beer from the store for him.
In response to testimony about loitering concerns outside the store, Patel said customers walk up and down the block to his store, Dunkin Donuts, Triple AAA pizza, and the New York Style Deli. He said his employees can’t keep track of what’s going on outside until customers bring it up; then they attempt to remove loiterers by calling the police.
“We call the cops. They’re gone for two minutes. Then they come back,” he said.
Patel also testified that the store checks all of its customers’ IDs to avoid serving underaged people.
During a meeting with the Whalley Avenue Special Services District (WASSD), a suggestion for store security was made. Patel said he can’t afford to get security for his store himself but would be willing to pay a portion of a security fee if split with businesses on the block.
Patel photo exhibit showing loitering at neighboring deli.
Neighbors argued that Beverage Boss, another liquor outlet a few blocks away, doesn’t attract the same problems. Patel argued that that’s because his store is at an intersection near food outlets attracting walk-in traffic, unlike Beverage Boss.
He added that his business has a parking lot, which causes other business patrons to park in his lot.
“Can you try to explain to me how that small difference in location makes all the difference in the world in the activities outside?” Comissioner McKinney asked.
“There is a big difference because there is a group of people that use all the different restaurants right in that area, right on that corner,” Smith said. “It’s just not the case at Beverage Boss. Yes, it’s only two blocks away but it’s a world away.”
The defense presented photo documentation of customers loitering outside of the New York Style Deli across the street and several videos of uncooperative customers who entered behind the sales counter and threatened employees.
“People sitting from early morning to late night hanging on that corner. Then they kick the people out and they come to this one then I kick them out and they cross the street,” Patel said. “Most people hanging out [at] that corner.”
Maya McFadden Photo
One video shows a customer standing at the pay counter while two employees work behind the counter. A second customer walks behind the sales counter, which is separated from the rest of the store with plexiglass. The customer seems to yell in one employee’s face, then apparently leaves.
Patel described the disruptive customer as dangerous and “the biggest trouble for the corner.”
“If he comes to my store I cannot pick up the phone, because he threatens me that ‘If you call the cops, I’m going to kill you.’ ”
He said he has been collecting video footage of the customer to provide to the police in order to seek to have him arrested and held for longer than the short periods of time he has been in the past.
Patel’s team presented a second similar video of the same customer entering behind the counter and threatening employees.
An email thread from July 1, 2021 was also submitted, between Patel’s nephew Akshar Patel who is a store employee, and police Capt. John Healy, formerly the top neighborhood cop. The email included a similar video of the same customer in addition to another entering behind the counter and threatening employees. Patel said he thinks one of the customers had a knife.
In response to the video Healy informed Akshar, “He was arrested.” The next day Akshar responded to Healy, saying, “Now he got out and coming back again in the store.”
Current WEB District Manager Lt. Ryan Przybylski later offered an update on that customer. Przybylski said when promoted to district manager he immediately identified the customer, who was causing trouble in the area. He said the man has been frequently arrested and drinks daily at the corner. While looking into the man’s several pending cases, Przybylski said, he discovered the man was out on bond, and part of his bond agreement was to not go to Paramount Liquor Store or drink alcohol. As a result, the man was taken again into custody, where he remains, for allegedly violating that promise.
After his testimony, Patel said he is willing to help the neighborhood to make improvements to his business.
During questioning by Horton, Patel said the property currently has two surveillance cameras. One camera captures customers who enter the parking lot. The second, Patel said, hasn’t been operational in eight months due to it being broken on three separate occasions.
“They broke them three times. I don’t want to keep putting back again and again and again,” he said. “But now I have to, and I will do it.”
Horton requested that Patel agree to a commitment to repair all cameras by May 15. He agreed to repair the cameras and said he will add more if needed.
Horton also requested that Patel install a movable parking lot fence that would be put up after closing everyday to deter drivers from using the lot to drive the wrong way down Winthrop Avenue. Patel agreed to install the fencing by May 31. He also agreed to pay a share along with his neighbors for an extra-duty officer.
Commissioner Balletto suggested Patel install a buzzer at the store’s entrance door to keep the disruptive customers from entering the store freely and relying only on the police.
In her closing remarks Horton described the business as a “thorn in the side” to all the neighborhood’s years of improvement efforts.
“It is not enjoyable to be called one of the five worst spots in the city. I live on the street,” she said, referring to Mayor Justin Elicker’s previous testimony labeling the corner as a city hot spot.
In Smith’s closing remarks, he said he has known Patel for 35 years and the neighbors’ testimony came as a surprise to him. “Harry’s always been somebody who’s willing to sit down and talk to people and work with them,” he said.
Before adjourning, the commissioners agreed to issue a decision soon.
After the hearing, Horton said she hopes the commission hears out the neighbors’ case to “restore the neighborhood’s safety and quality of life.”
“They [the commissioners] really are our last hope,” she said.