The manager of Caffè Mariani says her establishment is being unfairly targeted by police – but it seems both sides have some explaining to do after the popular St-Henri café racked up close to $3,500 in fines between April and August of 2011.
In August, the owners of the café began receiving fines in the mail totaling $3,344 for liquor license infractions – all the result of a series of undercover police operations.
Although police records show the first infraction happened on April 1, the café’s owners only got that fine in the mail nearly five months later. By that time, undercover police had returned repeatedly to the café, each time writing up a new infraction, without the knowledge of staff or owners.
Manager Valérie Pelletier says if she had known about the infractions, she would have clamped down on employees to make sure patrons weren’t drinking on the café’s terrace, or drinking without having ordered food. Pelletier says she and the owners are considering making a case for harassment.
But when contacted, several members of the media relations department of the Montreal police told OpenFile the same thing: Caffè Mariani’s owners knew the rules, and they didn’t follow them.
As for the delays in receiving the fines, police say there’s nothing out of the ordinary in the way the case unfolded and a delay of three to six months to receive a fine in the mail is standard. They also say uniformed police officers went to the café in person and told one of the owners they’d been busted the evening after the first infraction on April 1.
Pelletier says the owner doesn’t remember that visit from police, but concedes it could have happened. She maintains the first infraction stemmed from a private party that was an exceptional event for the café.
Indeed, the troubles seem to have started in the wee hours of the morning on April 1, when the café hosted a party for Pirates of the Lachine Canal, a local collective of artists and musicians. According to the police report, officers from the morality squad were patrolling the area during a prostitution operation when they noticed people drinking at Caffè Mariani between 1:30 and 2:30 a.m. As a result of the undercover investigation that night, the café incurred three fines totaling approximately $1,500.
For Pelletier, it’s not so black and white. She maintains the party was an exceptional event and wonders why morality police are focusing on her café, which she says is providing jobs for people in the neighbourhood, when massage parlours and prostitutes are present in the area as well.
“I’m really trying to be within the law here,” says Pelletier.
The café received a permit from the Southwest borough in 2010 to build their small terrace at the corner of Square de Sir Georges Étienne Cartier and Notre-Dame W., but Pelletier says the borough refused to give the café a certificate of occupation once it was built. The document is a requirement to be able to extend the café’s liquor license to the terrace.
It’s a zoning issue, says Marie Otis, the borough mayor’s cabinet director. Although the restaurant itself is located at 4450 Notre-Dame W., the terrace is considered to be on Square de Sir Georges Étienne Cartier, which is a residential street.
To change the zoning for their terrace, they would need to make a special application to the borough, called a “projet particulier,” which Otis says costs $3,000, takes several months and would not guarantee a favourable outcome for the café.
“If it was on Notre-Dame, it would be less complicated,” she says.
According to Pelletier, the café usually only sells three or four beers a day, and so the owners decided to forgo the application, instead vowing to just not let people drink outside.
But it proved difficult for the restaurant’s small staff to control. Customers got upset when they were told they could not enjoy a beer with their meal on the terrace.
Now the restaurant faces fines that cost more than the project application, and still have no liquor license.
Pelletier says the owners intend to plead not guilty, and want to contest the fines in court.
