Reprieve for manager of Warner’s Tavern

Press, 22 February 1978, Page 1

Reprieve for manager of Warner’s Tavern

“Weakness of management” shown by Mr Douglas Alleyne. the licensee and manager of Warner’s Tavern, might well mean that his certificate of management would be cancelled, said Mr F. G. Paterson. S.M., chairman of the Canterbury Licensing Committee, yesterday. The committee reserved its decision until its next sitting, probably in March, on an application by the police to have Mr Alleyne’s management certificate cancelled. Mr Paterson said that at this sitting the police would be invited to bring up to date the evidence of subsequent conduct at the tavern and Mr Alleyne’s management of it.

The committee was given details of bad behaviour at Warner’s Tavern. The police had been called seven times in December, on four of these occasions brawls had taken place, on three occasions Mr Alleyne had been intoxicated. and many patrons had been arrested.

In defence, Mr Alleyne said that since December he had barred about 50 or 60 persons from the tavern and consequently his takings had dropped about $5OO a week. The bars were now a much more pleasant place to drink, he said.

Senior-Sergeant R. M. Loader told the committee that during December the police had been forced to close the bars at Warner’s several times and had become very concerned about the behaviour at the hotel.

Mr Alleyne had been warned on December 15, and on December 28 he was given notice of the police application for cancellation of his manager’s certificate. Six hours later, however, a big brawl erupted in the tavern — during which five arrests were made and a policeman was seriously injured. Sergeant K. T. Boyle said that he was in the police squad that regularly visited licensed premises. Each time he visited Warner’s he had asked for

Mr Alleyne, and on only a few occasions had the manager been on the premises. “When he was there, he was affected by liquor,” said Sergeant Boyle. “I believe he is not a fit or proper person to hold a licence for a hotel.”

Sergeant Boyle described several visits to Warner’s during December, when he had seen fighting break out, and brawls develop. On one occasion he had seen 20 to 30 intoxicated persons of the “abusive criminal element” in the bar. Another time he found Mr Alleyne not present, but his bar manager there, and affected by liquor.

Under cross-examination by defence counsel (Mr C. B. Atkinson), Sergeant Boyle said that there was a hard core of "criminal layabouts” who tended to congregate in central city hotels. Many of them ended up at Warner’s Tavern about 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. usually after they had been thrown out of other city hotels.

Asked whether Warner’s had taken over where Noahs, the Clarendon, the Imperial, the Dominion, and the Star and Garter had left off, Sergeant Boyle said that a lot of inner-city hotels had trouble with patrons, but not as much or as continuously as Warners. He said it was only at certain hotels that the presence of the police upset drinkers, causing trouble and resentment, and the patrons were allowed by the management to get away with it. Asked by Mr Atkinson whether he knew that Mr Alleyne’s wife had been dying of cancer late last year, and that was why he had not been on the premises, Sergeant Boyle said he did not expect a hotel manager to be on the premises all the time, but if he was not going to be there, ,he should have someone more responsible appointed as bar manager.

Mr Atkinson said that the bar manager, Mr B. C. Columbus, had applied for the manager’s certificate

at Warner’s Tavern. The police had not. opposed this. Since part of Warner’s Hotel had become a tavern there had been a focus of trouble, Mr Atkinson said. “There are always complaints about fighting and brawls in that corner of the Square, with all the fast-food shops.” - Sergeant M. A. Penn told the committee that on December 16 he had attended Warner’s just after a brawl between Maoris and Samoans. A Maori was lying on a seat covered in blood. It appeared he was about to suffocate in his own blood, but he refused to go to hospital.

“I went to talk to Mr Alleyne, and found him in the foyer. He did not know that a brawl had taken place, and appeared intoxicated himself. His speech was slurred and he was slightly incoherent. “While I was talking to him, one of my constables came up and told me that another fight had just

started in the tavern,” Sergeant Penn said.

He had been at another disturbance in the public bar on December 17, when Mr Alleyne was not present, and again on December 20, when the atmosphere inside the bar was explosive. Again, Mr Alleyne was not present, and his bar manager closed the bar.

Eight days later witness had visited the bar again with a police squad, and when a woman had been arrested, the whole place had erupted into a brawl. The police were ounched and jostled by many drinkers as they tried to get their prisoners out to a car, and patrons then spilled out into the Square. One constable was seriously injured, requiring 17 stitches, and several arrests were made oefore the bar was closed. Mr Atkinson said his case was that the trouble at Warner’s did not start with Mr Alleyne —

fighting and problem patrons in that hotel and in that comer of the Square

had always been before the public eye, both in the courts and in the newspapers.

Mr Alleyme had had his manager’s certificate for only four months, during a period of grave personal problems, with the death of his wife in October, and the difficulty over Christmas with patrons. In evidence, Mr Alleyne said that he had been drinking too much when his wife had died, but since then this had stopped. He now’ had only a few drinks, usually in the morning, with breweries representatives and salesmen. He drank beer during the day and whisky at night, but was careful to ration himself because there was so much available.

Before taking over Warnej’s, he had been the licensee at a West Coast hotel for eight years, and at Chertsey for tjiree years. He agreed with Senior-Sergeant Loader, under cross-examination, that Warner’s was “a completely different ball-

game altogether” from rural hotels. At the end of the hearing, Mr Paterson said that the committee was unanimously concerned about the apparent weakness of management displayed by Mr Alleyne, and his certificate might well have to be cancelled.

This concern was particularly so in regard to the evidence given about incidents in December, and the committee would have liked to have been helped further by the police, with more direct evidence of Mr Alleyne’s managerial ability, as well as evidence related to January and February. “To be fair to the respondent, although the committee’s confidence is not strong, the application will be adjourned until the next quarterly meeting of the committee, 'when the hearing will be resumed,” said Mr Paterson.