NY Governor Cuomo: 105 Violations Over Weekend with Liquor License Suspensions to Come by Monday

Despite having pledged to roll back NYC’s reopening and Close Bars and Restaurants if Illegal Gatherings continued, the Governor this morning spoke of the work being done by the Task Force he’d put together. Consisting of a combination of State Liquor Authority Investigators and New York State Police this enforcement group encountered 105 violations at Bars and Restaurants on Friday and Saturday Evening.

The Audio of his statement as well as an answer given to a press question can be found below. The question asked is not far from that which we wished to ask of Mr. Cuomo.

It’s not clear if the recent videos of gatherings in the Lower East Side and Northern section of Manhattan were amongst those violations and expected suspensions.

Recently, he revealed the many violations and numerous suspensions issued after 1,000 establishments had been visited by SLA Investigators.

Transcript to the following Audio can be found below:

Governor Cuomo:

“We have the quarantine in place, we’re aggressive about the enforcement of the quarantine. And then we have the compliance challenge, especially for young people, especially around bars. I once again ask local governments to do their job.”

“State government has gotten more aggressive. We’ve put together a task force of the State Liquor Authority and the State Police. Over Friday and Saturday night, they did 105 violations. They’ve been focusing on the downstate area, but the 105 are across downstate. They’re Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk. So literally in every county in downstate New York City down. They have had violations. They’re going to be doing additional suspensions that they will do tomorrow. The suspensions are done by the board. The investigator cannot issue a suspension. They can issue a violation. The board has to suspend, and the board will be meeting to talk about it tomorrow.”

When asked to elaborate on this:

“On the suspensions, we have increased the number of visits. The 105 violations … they are, everything we’ve been talking about. They’re people outside of bars gathering and drinking which is illegal.

The takeout alcohol was you take out alcohol, you go home and you drink it. It was not you take out alcohol and then you stand in front of the bar and you drink it. That violates the open container law. It also violates the bars rules in terms of selling ‘to go’ alcohol. That’s a major violation.

Inside the establishments, the employees not wearing masks – the servers not wearing masks. Those are probably the two biggest categories.

The board meets tomorrow to discuss possible suspensions. They’ll have the reports from the investigators and then they’ll make a decision on how many suspensions they do tomorrow.”