Montebello Dance Hall’s Days May be Numbered
Law enforcement claims ‘raves’ held at the site are a public nuisance.
By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, EGP Staff Writer
A Montebello dance hall owner who began renting his space out last year for all-ages “rave” dance parties landed in hot water with the city after a local law enforcement investigation revealed evidence pointing to under-aged drinking and illegal drug activity on his premises.
Seventy-two year old Ruben O. Chavez may be required to shut down Terraza Jamay, a 700-person capacity space on Whittier Blvd and Tenth Street that he also rents out for special occasion events such as quinceañeras and weddings.
Montebello dance hall may be shut down due to alleged violations involving under-age drinking and drug-use at raves and other events, which the city says property owner failed to control. (EGP Photo by Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou)
The city council is expected to vote next Wednesday to decide if they will support city staff’s decision to take away his business license and “cabaret dance” permit.
One law enforcement officer stated at a June 24 city council meeting that he witnessed young people, who appeared to be under-age, openly drinking beer and hard liquor while waiting to get into the dance hall.
Another officer working undercover compared her efforts with finding the drug “ecstasy” at the dance hall to being as easy as “asking where the popcorn stand was at the ballpark.” The officer, Corporal Jennifer Garcia, was able to purchase ecstasy on the premises.
The investigation involved the Montebello Police and Fire departments, the city’s Code Enforcement division, and the Alcohol Beverage Control agency, and was conducted in February and March.
Chavez’s attorney George Pacheco says his client did not expect the large crowds at the raves and was unaware of the violations that contributed to a notice sent by the city in May ordering the suspension of his business license.
Pacheco made appeals for his client during the June 24 council meeting amid trial-like proceedings that required council to act as judges while he and City Prosecutor James Eckart traded arguments on whether or not the owner deserved to lose his licenses and permits.
Pacheco says his client had been renting the space out since 1974 and had no major violations for a 34 year period, right up until the last year when he began opening up the space to organizers of raves, a type of party in which participants dance to electronic music while carrying colorful, glowing toys or jewelry.
He claims that Chavez did not know what he was getting himself into when he agreed to let his space to rave parties.
“Mr. Chavez’s heart was in the right place, but he was not prepared to deal with the amount of kids that would come to these dances,” Pacheco said. “… now I say his heart was in the right place because there is no other venue for under 18 minors.”
Local law enforcement officials claim raves have a dark side. Rave culture is not only characterized by dancers listening to music, playing with the effects of light, and sucking on pacifiers, blow pops and other candies, say officials.
Raves parties are by definition an experience enhanced by the use of ecstasy, a drug that heightens the senses and promotes feelings of euphoria in the user, according Corporal Garcia, who on March 27 attended a rave under the guise of a party-goer.
“If you take away the ecstasy and all the sales of items that enhance the effects of ecstasy, you merely have a dance, a social gathering, or a club,” she said.
“I can tell you, having been a police officer for ten years, I have seen some absolutely horrible things, … the one thing that disturbed me the most about what was going on in this facility was not necessarily the drug use, I’ve seen that before. It wasn’t the type of activity. It was the fact that this activity was being done by kids as young as I would say twelve,” she said.
Alcohol Beverage Control officer Sal Zavala said his partner, observed “more than a hundred to 150 kids under the influence, blown out pupils, very huggable, very affectionate with one another.”
Chavez was notified in May that the city would be shutting him down immediately, but was able to obtain temporary permits with the help of his attorney in order to honor some of his non-rave engagements. The attorney claims during that time there have been no more complaints or discovery of additional violations involving the dance hall.
“In effect, [Mr. Chavez] stopped doing those [rave] dances… after he found out about those myriad of violations,” Pacheco said.
He argued that the city should have given Chavez time to address the violations, instead of making his suspension effective immediately.
“He’s a mom and pop situation. Had he had some kind of written warning that his livelihood was going to be taken away, unless he did something drastic, then I’m sure we wouldn’t even be here,” Pacheco said.
But written notices aside, city officials say Chavez should have been well aware of the violations because both the police and fire departments have spoken to him on several occasions.
“Mr. Chavez is like an ostrich with his head in the sand,” said Eckart. He said complaints have come into the city about public nuisances around the dance hall well before the raves began.
“He needs to step up to the plate and he needed to take control of what was going on,” Eckart said.
In October of last year the city had to call for extra help to round up 300 people who were hanging around outside the dance hall, which already had 500 people inside.
“The incident was so big and so dangerous that [the Montebello Police Department] had to call in mutual aid from a neighboring city to bring in assistance from their police department in order to shut the place down. Mr. Chavez was present on that day and he was spoken to by the members of the police department,” Eckart said.
“So for him to come and say ‘Give me one more opportunity, I will finally take care of it…’ This is a person who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar saying, now they’ve caught me… but where has he been for the entire period that these issues have been going on?”
Part of the city staff’s argument against Terraza Jamay staying open is that the dance hall is a drain on taxpayer money and city resources. The crowd control incident cost the city $3,030, according to calculations by Code Enforcement Supervisor Lynda Carter.
Police Sergeant Kelly Gordon says the department devotes a significant part of its patrol on most Fridays to monitoring and controlling the crowds that form around the dance hall. This is not a situation unique to the raves, which have only “exasperated” existing nuisance problems, she says.
Fire Marshall Kurt Johnson meanwhile said the dance hall has the “single highest calls for service” after the convalescent homes.
The city’s investigations also revealed some additional safety and code violations beyond the illegal drinking and drugs, including too few licensed security guards on packed nights and bolt locks on emergency exit doors.
Eckart says the council should focus on Chavez as a businessperson with responsibilities to the community. “It’s not about whether we should feel sorry for Mr. Chavez or whether we think over the last thirty years he’s done some good or he’s providing an outlet to our youth,” he said.
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July 2, 2009 Copyright © 2010 Eastern Group Publications, Inc.
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3 Responses to “Montebello Dance Hall’s Days May be Numbered”
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I think that this whole situation is ridiculous. It’s been made clear that Mr. Chavez rents out his facility and has been renting out the facility for decades. If you want someone to prosecute for illegal behavior, how about the organizations and individuals renting the facility. It’s not his responsibility to make sure that the person who is organizing the events is not meeting their part of the agreement and hiring qualified individuals at the door to check ID’s, qualified bartenders to not hand out drinks to attendees who appear underage, and qualified security to keep druggies and drug dealers out of the event. He rents out the business, the four walls and the floor. It’s not his job to police what happens inside of there, that’s the job of the police. Lastly, just because the individuals drinking and taking drugs APPEAR to be under the legal age, doesn’t mean they ARE. We invented ID’s for a reason people, let’s start looking at them. If a 12 year old is out on a school night drinking and doing drugs, why are we blaming Mr. Chavez when the parents so obviously are the ones being criminally negligent? Don’t we have curfew’s in LA County for people under 18? I know that’s what they announce in Universal Citywalk every time their curfew crew comes by. I don’t condone the behavior that’s going on there, but I say let’s BLAME THE RIGHT PEOPLE.
These types of behaviors will never be avoided. These types of events don’t encourage drug use or alcohol, society’s influence create taboos to make them as essential part of it. I’ve been offered ecstasy at almost every single nightclub in Hollywood. What do you expect?
i think that mr.chavez is part of the blame because she should already know what he was getting into with theses raves parties he shouldn’t know better then to do rave’s an all ages events don’t do them if you cant handle them