City Leaders Address Hailee's Situation

Since the City of Mauldin began taking action against earlier this year, some, including Hailee’s owner Sonny Ninan, have accused the city of engaging in “selective enforcement and harassment.”

During the hearing to revoke Hailee’s business license on Aug. 16^th, Ninan claimed that the Mauldin Police Department is not only “picking” on his establishment, but he knew why. Ninan said that the police were engaged in retribution for the fact that they were no longer being used to work security during off-duty hours at Hailee’s.

On Wednesday, city officials addressed those claims. Mauldin Police Chief Bryan Turner responded to the accusations during his testimony at the August hearing and repeated them in an interview with Mauldin Patch.

Turner said that he did permit Mauldin police officers to work security in the parking lot at Hailee’s on Friday and Sunday nights from Nov. 5, 2010 to Jan. 23, 2011. Turner said that from the start, he was uneasy about the arrangement. “I probably should have ended it sooner,” he said.

Turner said that one of the problems was that police officers who were working parking lot security were doing so on property that was not owned by Ninan. The parking lot and strip mall where Hailee’s resides are leased to the corporation that owns Hailee’s. Turner believes that the owner of property should be making the decisions about security, not the tenant, which is what Hailee’s is in this case.

Security inside of Hailee’s is handled through a private firm. Turner pointed out that the only time officers were actually inside the building was to act as law enforcement for the city of Mauldin.

Turner said he was also concerned by the fact police were not asked to work on Saturday morning, and just on Fridays and Saturdays. He said the reason for this was that management at Hailee’s did not want police near the establishment on Saturday night into Sunday morning because alcohol was being served after 2 a.m., a violation of the law. If police were near the site and were aware of the law being broken, they would be compelled to act.

In January, Turner decided to cease the arrangement between Hailee’s and the police. “I didn’t have too many officers sad to see that detail go away.”

Ninan claimed in testimony in August that since Turner made that decision, the efforts to quell Hailee’s have been stepped up as payback for denying police officers some extra income.

Turner insisted that was not true and pointed a steady stream of incident reports that began almost immediately after the property was annexed in June of 2010.

It has also been suggested that SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division) is investigating the city police force for improprieties. Turner was not aware of that being the case. Mauldin’s Mayor Don Godbey said flatly: “The city is not being investigated by SLED.”

Godbey also denied that the city looked the other way when approached about looking into the possibility of harassment by the police to Hailee’s. “I’ve never heard anything about that. No one has ever asked me about it,” he said.

As he did in August, Turner once again shot down the notion that Hailee’s is being singled out. He pointed out that when enforcement of the new alcohol ordinance went into affect last week, every establishment in the city to whom the ordinance applied was visited and made aware of when the ordinance would begin to be enforced. Since the enforcement began, two employees were arrested for violating the ordinance.

Ninan’s lawyer Robert Childs is unconvinced by the city’s insistence that Hailee’s is not being singled out. “(Hailee’s) are definitely being made an example of,” Childs said. “There are some serious problems here.”

Childs told Mauldin Patch that Hailee’s has requested a motion to re-consider the decision in 13^th Circuit Court that denied an appeal to the injunction against the alcohol ordinance. Childs also said Hailee’s has filed an appeal to the same court against the revocation of Hailee’s business license.