Officials say bouncer slain over NYC’s smoking ban
NEW YORK (Reuters) --A bouncer at a trendy Manhattan nightclub was stabbed to death after he tried to enforce New York’s tough new anti-smoking law, officials said Monday.
Police said the bouncer was stabbed in the early hours of Sunday morning in the Guernica club on the Lower East Side after asking one of two brothers in the club to put out a cigarette.
After an argument with the men, the bouncer tried to eject them and was stabbed in the stomach “with an unknown sharp object,” police said.
The bouncer, 6-foot-6 Dana “Shazam” Blake, 32, died of his injuries.
The two brothers, Jonathan Chan, 29, and Ching Chan, 31, of Manhattan’s Chinatown face charges of assault, criminal possession of a weapon and resisting arrest, police and prosecutors said.
New York’s tough new law banning smoking in bars and restaurants, with very few exceptions, was pushed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former smoker who has turned into an anti-smoking zealot. The law, which went into effect on March 30 and penalizes first-time offenders with a $200 fine, was designed to protect workers in the city’s 13,000 bars and restaurants that have allowed smoking.
Businesses caught repeatedly allowing smoking run the risk of being shut down.
Bouquets of flowers and photographs in tribute to Blake were displayed outside the Guernica club, which serves Spanish tapas and cocktails and has a dance floor.
For 15-year old Michael Eugene Thomas, it definitely was the shoes. A ninth grader at Meade Senior High School in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, Thomas was found strangled on May 2, 1989. Charged with first degree murder was James David Martin, 17, a basketball buddy who allegedly took Thomas’s two week old Air Jordan basketball shoes and left Thomas’s barefoot body in the woods near school. . .
In 1983, 14 year old Dewitt Duckett was shot to death in the hallway of Harlem Park Junior High in Baltimore by someone who apparently wanted Duckett’s silky blue Georgetown jacket. In 1985, 13 year old Shawn Jones was shot in Detroit after five youths took his Fila sneakers. But lately the pace of the carnage has quickened. In January, 1988, an unidentified Houston boy, a star athlete in various sports, allegedly stabbed and killed 22 year old Eric Allen with a butcher knife after the two argued over a pair of tennis shoes in the home the youths shared with their mothers. Seven months later a gunman in Atlanta allegedly robbed an unnamed 17 year old of his Mercedes-Benz and Avia high tops after shooting to death the boy’s 25 year old friend, Carl Middlebrooks, as Middlebrooks pedaled away on his bike. Last November, Raheem Wells, the quarterback for Detroit Kettering High, was murdered, allegedly by six teenagers who swiped his Nike sneakers. In Baltimore last summer 19 year old Ronnell Ridgeway was robbed of his $40 sweatpants and then shot and killed. In March, Chris Demby, a 10th grader at Franklin Learning Center in West Philadelphia, was shot and killed for his new Nikes. In April, 1989, 16 year old Johnny Bates was shot to death in Houston by 17 year old Demetrick Walker after Johnny refused to turn over his Air Jordan high tops . . .
Sorry, didn’t mean to use offensive language. Take a cigarette away from a person of Chinese ancestry living in the US and you’re in really big trouble.
It does strike me as odd: This bylaw is ostensibly to protect workers from the effects of second-hand smoke in the workplace.
But why not leave it up to the owners of the establishment whether or not they wish to run a non-smoking bar? As long a job applicant is warned in advance that they will be working in a smoking zone, they can choose whether or not to risk their health by pursuing the job further.
I think for the most part, bar workers couldn’t give a toss whether the customers smoke or not. I’ll bet there are more than a few bars going to go out of business over this smoking ban and a lot of bar workers will lose their jobs as a result … and that doesn’t really appear to benefit anyone, least of all the workers.
That argument has been made by many bar and restaurant owners in the states – that if smoking bans are imposed they will go out of business. But for the most part I don’t think that’s happening, and smoking bans are popular in most of the US. In California one can hardly smoke outside ones house. In my former town they banned smoking on the grassy plaza in the middle of town or on certain sidewalk areas, because it interferes with the right not to inhale someone else’s smoke. Admittedly, that is a little extreme.
But, although I’m opposed to most government restrictions on personal liberties, as a non-cigarette smoker the bans don’t bother me at all. After all, non-smoking sections in many restaurants make no difference at all. And I believe many smokers actually like the laws because it gives them incentive to quit or at least cut back. And I’m sure many employees hate working in smoke filled workplaces but feel they don’t have much choice due to needing a job. There have been successful suits filed by such employees.
Sure, it’s a typical US thing. Govt imposing laws to protect people and people filing lawsuits rather than just quitting and leaving. But, not only may nonsmokers dislike secondhand smoke, and get cancer from it, but they pay for the medical bills of those who do smoke. That’s why US states were able to recover billions of dollars in judgments against the tobacco companies.
So, maybe smokers gripe about the laws, but they should remember that the laws are only there because their govt loves them and cares about them. Tough love.
True. . . . . . or at least it was until some bonehead internet geek installed a camera aimed at the plaza and projecting live onto the internet 24 hours a day, which seriously perturbed many locals who value their privacy.
. . . or at least it was until some bonehead internet geek installed a camera aimed at the plaza and projecting live onto the internet 24 hours a day, which seriously perturbed many locals who value their privacy.