Bar owner explains high number of police calls

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A local bar owner looks to clear up some misinformation in the community.

We learned Ray Magus who owns Ray's Place plans to address Lima City Council at Monday night's meeting. He's the third bar owner to do so in two weeks, but Magnus says he's just trying to clear up some misinformation in the community.

"I just want to make it plain because the way that the Lima News printed it is that Ray's Place is number three and that's not true. If you look at the actual number of calls that was attributed to Ray's Place its very, very low," Magnus explained.

He's taking that message about his bar all the way to Monday night's Lima City Council meeting.

He's worried the public has the wrong perception of the bar, which has had 68 police calls since December 31, 2010.

"There were some in there that were traffic stops in the neighborhood and when they put it in the computer it comes up as Ray's Place, but out of the 68 calls only 17 to 20 of them were actually calls for Ray's Place," Magnus said.

Records show 14 of those incidents were fights, followed by harassment, and intoxicated persons.

Magnus' remarks to city council will come one week after two other bar owners spoke out at city council, accusing the police department of unfairly targeting them, but Magnus doesn't see it like that.

"I have absolutely no problem with the Lima Police Department of them doing their job with the calls because every time we've called for whatever reason, they've always shown up," Magnus said.

Lima Police Major Chip Protsman says the department tries to work with bar owners and only steps up enforcement around specific bars when problems do arise.

"We don't target specific bars, but if there are specific issues that we know about, calls of large fights or crowds, we certainly start paying attention to try to stop that before someone becomes injured," Protsman explained.

Protsman says it's because of that public safety issue the department requested the Brownstone Restaurant and Lounge lose its liquor license. Magnus says if bar owners just work with the police they won't run into that problem.

"I've even told other bar owners, if you go down and talk to the police department they will go out of their way to help you," Magnus said.

Brownstone owner Jason Upthegrove will also speak at Monday's meeting and says he'll do so indefinitely, protesting council's decision to not renew the Brownstone's liquor license.