-- ABC investigators find extensive menu of criminality at the Grasshopper
Date: 10/26/2009
"Oh, Grasshopper, could you be creepier?"
So wrote one patron on the dinning and entertainment Web site Yelp.com about the Grasshopper bar on 5100 Fountain Avenue in Los Angeles. Yelp, which also lists the Grasshopper in its "Dive Bars" sub-category, also notes that the established is now CLOSED in capital letters.
On October 9, the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) announced it had finally revoked the license of the Grasshopper bar--three years after an undercover operation by ABC investigators ended in the arrests of four people.
In 2006, after receiving numerous complaints from residents around the Grasshopper, ABC investigators launched a five-month undercover operation during which time they purchased cocaine and crack cocaine on 12 separate occasions from three patrons and a bartender. The bartender also supplied investigators with depressant pills twice and snorted lines of cocaine in front of them.
To emphasize the type of establishment the Grasshopper was, while the investigation was going on Channel 2 News reported the arrests of three men, three women and a 17-year-old girl for robbing it one night.
On Nov. 14, 2006 ABC investigators served search warrants on the bar and on a dealer who had been operating out of the Grasshopper. Investigators confiscated several ounces of cocaine and a Mack 10 automatic firearm. The Hollywood Narcotics Division of the Los Angeles Police Department assisted with the investigation and surveillance.
"Our ABC investigators were at a Ground Zero for illegal drug dealing that had connections to violent gangs throughout Southern California," said Shelley Bishop, president of the California Association of State Investigators (CASI). "Thanks to the dangerous work of ABC investigators, residents around the Grasshopper can walk to and from their homes a lot more safely. These valiant men and women are fully armed, sworn peace officers with a specialized training no other law enforcement agency in the entire state has. That policymakers in Sacramento have let this vital band of front-line law enforcement professionals dwindle to just around 150 for a state with 81,000 licensed liquor establishments is a disgraceful disservice to the public safety of California."
Alan Barcelona, president of the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association, of which CASI is an affiliate, concurred with Bishop. "ABC investigators work in the most undesirable places at the most undesirable hours around the most undesirable people society has to offer. They have to work in places most of us wouldn't be caught dead in. Yet our state rewards them not with support but a 15 percent pay cut through furloughs instead. That, to me, is a crime of a different sort."
Meanwhile, Up North
- A sting involving the purchase of stolen items from an undercover ABC investigator has led to the license suspension of a San Bruno (San Mateo County) liquor store.
- Also in San Mateo County, a Pacifica eatery has is facing revocation of its license after Internal Revenue Service Agents arrested the proprietor for illegal gambling, money laundering, and conspiracy to conduct an illegal gambling business.
The first link below takes you to the Yelp.com review of the Grasshopper, the second link to an ABC news release on the 2006 operation.
For more information:
| contactus@cslea.com | (800) 551-1414 | 2029 H Street • Sacramento, CA 95811 |