KALAMAZOO, MI — No one will face charges tied to allegations of drink tampering at Y Bar and Bistro, Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting confirmed Thursday, June 10.
Two people, including one of the bar’s co-owners, will face charges for serving alcohol to minors, Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Public Information Officer Ryan Bridges said.
Related: Kalamazoo officer defended Y Bar owner when first hearing drink-tampering allegations, report says
The police investigation was closed almost two months after the allegations of drink tampering were first reported on April 15. Multiple women reported they believed their drinks were drugged by Y Bar co-owner Jon Rockwood on April 12. The allegations made international headlines after a TikTok video from one of those making the allegations went viral.
After the investigation was concluded, the case was sent to the Kalamazoo County Prosecutor’s Office on June 7, Bridges said.
No charges of drink tampering were filed, Prosecutor Jeff Getting told MLive via text message. There was not sufficient evidence to charge either Rockwood or a bartender working that night with drink tampering, Getting said.
Rockwood previously denied there was any truth to the allegations. He said the business was fully cooperating with police, in a May 5 YouTube video. Rockwood could not be reached for comment on June 10.
Related: Co-owner of Kalamazoo bar in drink tampering investigation denies wrongdoing
“Sadly, we’re living in a time when false, damaging information like this can be trumpeted as truth on social media, and the cancel culture threatens the livelihood of a small business owner like me,” Rockwood said in the video.
One woman told police she had two drinks and two shots during a 2 1/2 hour period, and then had almost no memories from the rest of the night, according to KDPS police reports obtained by MLive through a Freedom of Information Act.
Police took video footage captured by cameras inside the bar on the night of the alleged drink tampering incident. The wide-angle footage shows numerous people sitting at tables, at the bar and dancing while being served drinks throughout the night.
“We’ve got many, many hours of investigation into this,” KDPS Deputy Chief Dave Boysen said. “We scoured … every second of that video, watched each individual person in that video, their movements. We watched it multiple times to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
Police tested samples of alcohol from the bottles and inspected bottles for tampering, Boysen said.
The women who said they were drugged took over-the-counter drug tests, the police report said. Some tests showed they had opioids in their system. However some tests were invalid, the report said.
Those tests are also inadmissible in court, Boysen said. By the time the women made the police report, any drugs would have been out of their system, he said.
“It is what it is,” Boysen said. “There is nothing there that we can further charge than what we have done.”
Reporting the allegations of drink tampering took multiple attempts, the women told police.
One woman made her first call to KDPS on April 13, the day after the incident. That call ended with an officer telling her he was friends with Rockwood, and there was no way Rockwood would drug drinks, according to the woman’s statement to police.
In a separate report from KDPS Officer Aaron DeWaal, the officer describes one of the women making allegations over the phone on April 13. She told the officer that their drinks were tampered with but did not make an official report at that time, DeWaal’s report said.
After talking with the woman who declined to make the report, DeWaal said he called Rockwood and told him about the allegations. Rockwood told DeWaal he was not aware of drugs being distributed in the bar, the report said.
It is very normal for officers to make that kind of call, Boysen said. He said typically a patrol officer takes the victim’s statement, talks to witnesses and the suspect, puts it all in a report and sends it to the detective bureau for further investigation.
The woman who called KDPS on April 13 then attempted to file a report over the phone with Michigan State Police Paw Paw post, she told police. The trooper she spoke with asked her if it was about drinks being drugged before she even said anything about what happened, her statement said.
She told police that the trooper on the phone then made excuses for KDPS and told her she would have to make the report through them, her statement said. Y Bar and Bistro is in the city of Kalamazoo.
The same woman and another person went to Western Michigan University Police to report the incident the next day, April 14. They were told to report to the “Kalamazoo police department,” the statement said.
They searched for Kalamazoo police and ended up at the Kalamazoo Township Police Department, where they were then directed to a KDPS station. From that station, they were sent to KDPS headquarters where an officer took the report on April 15, two days after the incident, according to police reports.
“There is nothing as evidence to substantiate the claims that were made by the victims,” Boysen said. “Unfortunately, without any evidence we can prove, we’re unable to move the case forward, other than charging with what we could prove, which was furnishing alcohol to minors.”
The women told police during the drink tampering investigation that they liked going to Y Bar because they know they could buy drinks, despite being younger than 21, the police report said.
Rockwood now faces four misdemeanor counts of selling or furnishing alcohol to a minor, according to Kalamazoo County District Court records. He is scheduled to be arraigned June 23. A female bartender is also facing the same charges, Getting said.
The April incident was not the first time allegations were made of drink tampering at the bar near Western Michigan University’s campus.
One woman told police in January 2020, that she believed someone had “drugged her drink at the Y-Bar and raped her.” In November 2020, another woman told police she was sexually assaulted in the woods near the bar and did not remember parts of that night.
Protestors gathered outside Y Bar on April 19 — the week after the allegations were made public — to bring awareness to the issue and help notify potential victims.
More from MLive:
$1 million of crystal methamphetamine seized during traffic stop on I-196 in Van Buren County
‘It’s unexpectedly moving,’ says nephew of sailor killed at Pearl Harbor identified decades later
"drink" - Google News
June 11, 2021 at 01:24AM
https://ift.tt/3pIh8M5
Y Bar owner charged with serving minors, but cleared of drink tampering allegations in police investigation - MLive.com
"drink" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2STbaKe
https://ift.tt/2VWmZ3q
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Y Bar owner charged with serving minors, but cleared of drink tampering allegations in police investigation - MLive.com"
Post a Comment