SCOTT: BP liquor license suspended
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By Carmen Ensinger
Mayor Rex McIntire announced last week that, as Liquor Commissioner, he was suspending the liquor license of the BP gas station and convenience store for a period of one week for selling both alcohol and tobacco products to minors, not once, but twice in March.
“In my authority as Mayor and Liquor Commissioner, I have suspended the liquor licensed (and consequently, gaming license) at the BP station,” McIntire said. “This penalty is a result of the illegal selling of alcohol to minors.”
A hearing was held at City Hall on April 20 between the owners, Sonni and Surjit Singh, Winchester Police Chief Steve Doolin, City Attorney John Paul Coonrod, Aldermen Lawrence Coultas and Terry Gregory and McIntire.
At this meeting, Doolin reported that he had received numerous tips from citizens and other law enforcement officials that employees of the BP were selling alcohol and tobacco products to minor.
Agents of the Illinois Liquor Commission were contacted and asked to assist in an attempt to make purchases of these products using underage confidential sources.
The first buy occurred on March 24 when a male employee sold both alcohol and tobacco products to a 19 year old female without asking for identification. As a result of this, another operation was set up for March 30. On this night, a female employee was on duty. She asked for identification and when the subject went to the car to retrieve the identification, upon presenting it to the employee, the employee looked at it and still made the sale.
The Singh’s said they had software in place to prevent this from happening because employee’s should scan the ID before ever making the sale. However, if they don’t scan the ID, the software doesn’t do much good.
This is not the first time the business has been cited. Back in May of 2021, a similar hearing was held after an employee was cited for selling to a minor. Ironically, one of the employees cited this time was the same employee cited in 2021.
McIntire said he was lenient then, but he can’t be this time.
“There had to be some kind of substantial penalty or the other bars here in town are going to be saying, ‘well, they have been serving to minors for who knows how long and he doesn’t do a darn thing about’,” McIntire said. “We have to treat everyone equally and its hard for us to clamp down on some of these other businesses on ordinance violations if we let them get by without some kind of penalty.”
The suspension ran from April 26 to May 2. Also, a condition attached to the penalty was that the Singh’s must remove all of the bongs and other marijuana related items, including THC and hemp related items for sale in the store.
As Singh said in the hearing, the sale of alcohol doesn’t make them enough profit to sell to minors and risk such a penalty. However, by suspending their liquor license, it also shuts off their gaming machines, which does hit them in the cash register.
