Chuck E. Cheese Deemed A Safety Threat To Community

[matcom]

<snip>

A Milwaukee alderman wants to shut down a south side Chuck E. Cheese's, the family-themed pizza joint better known for its arcade games and jungle gyms than its armed guards.

"I feel that that Chuck E. Cheese's is a threat to the health, safety and welfare of the community," said 14th District Ald. Tony Zielinski. "In fact, a police officer I talked to said it could be just a matter of time until a shooting takes place."

Police were called to the restaurant chain's 2701 S. Chase Ave. location 18 times in June and July on calls ranging from theft and car burglaries to a fight involving 40 people that took 11 officers and three police sergeants to defuse.

That fight led to a meeting with Zielinski, a District 2 police captain, a community prosecutor and restaurant management in early September to work on a plan to curb crime there, the alderman said.

A month later, police were called to a fight that started over teenagers using the basketball game. Police who went to the scene were threatened, and one officer was hit by a steel napkin dispenser thrown by a teenager on one side of the fight at someone on the other, according to police reports.

Around the same time, restaurant security began carrying guns, Zielinski said.

"When people envision a Chuck E. Cheese's, they envision a nice, pleasant safe environment," Zielinski said. "This Chuck E. Cheese's is anything but that, and I blame the company for that."

An employee at Chuck E. Cheese's said the manager was gone for the day. Several calls to CEC Entertainment Corp., Chuck E. Cheese's parent company in Texas, were not returned Thursday.

Zielinski, who recently pushed for a truancy crackdown at a Bay View McDonald's, prompted by neighbors' complaints, said he will ask to have the Chuck E. Cheese's liquor license pulled when the city licensing committee meets in January.

"I told them that they should surrender their license because I believe liquor is certainly one of the contributing factors," Zielinski said. A 16-ounce beer goes for $3.99 at the restaurant.

If the effort to stop beer sales fails, Zielinski said, he will target the business' arcade license.

It's not the first time one of the company's restaurants, which have a giant mouse mascot, robotic animal band stage shows and the slogan "Where a kid can be a kid," has raised the ire of Milwaukee-area politicians and police.

In 2003, the Town Board in Brookfield asked the restaurant's Blue Mound Road location to hire private security and complained that they were being called to the restaurant so frequently it had affected the town's safety.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=529383&format=print

[eyesroll]

1. I live less than a mile from there.

Sigh.

Not that I think a Chuck E Cheese in general is a community asset...still...my neighborhood is generally safe and quiet (with just the usual petty crimes inherent in a city) but that restaurant's gone crazy.

[kick-ass-bob]

2. Hate mongrels.

:mad:

[RetroLounge]

3. They are So Screwn!

:9

RL

[LeftyMom]

4. Sounds like the scariest place since Walgreens in Watsonville.

We almost lost 3 DUers there. :scared: Who'd have thought the Saturday night gang hang out would be a pharmacy?

[Blue State Blues]

5. Now that is just sad

I didn't know the Cheezers sold beer though. Although he's also cracking down on McDonalds and they don't sell beer ... or do they in Milwaukee?

[eyesroll]

7. No -- here, he's cracking down on McD's because McD's allows truant students to hang out there.

The truants have been deemed a nuisance (they also loiter, harass businesses and patrons, intimidate younger children trying to go to school and so forth) and McDonalds hasn't been cooperative.

Now they are.

[Blue State Blues]

9. Thanks for the info

I was picturing a McDonalds in Milwaukee serving beer as a regional thing, like lobster rolls in maine or the McRib in the south, and the concept of McBeer was scary on so many levels.

[LSdemocrat]

20. They actually sell McBier in other countries

[Blue State Blues]

23. What the McF*ck?!

But of course, Deutschland. And from the list there, looks like all of Europe, Australia and Asia. I wonder if they're selling local brands or their own.

[jmowreader]

27. They were selling canned Berliner Kindl in the Berlin McDonalds in the 1980s

Which may explain why bier sales at McDonalds weren't all that great: Canned Kindl is, essentially, McPiss im Dose.

The GIs would go in and get it so they could go back to the States and brag about How You Can Drink Beer At McDonalds! Yeah, shitty fucking beer you wouldn't touch with a 10-meter pole if you weren't in Mickey Fucking D's.

The McDonalds out in West Germany (what we called "the zone") didn't serve McPiss im Dose. They had German beer that was actually decent there.

[deucemagnet]

6. "Where a kid can be a kid and an adult can be stabbed."

If the CEC Entertainment Corp. cares about their image, they'll close this location and run away screaming. They should have gotten a clue around the time they needed armed guards.

[JVS]

16. "where kids and adults alike can be raging assholes"

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. Imagine if we spent the Iraq war money unshitholing our shitholes

Imagine all that money spent to fix up, spruce up, improve the schools in, hike up the economy of, build up the infrastructure of, create jobs in, bring hope to, and otherwise take all our crappy neighborhoods that are, in so many ways, lands of lawlessness like Iraq, and unshitholed them and made them more fit for human habitation, and brought the people in them into the world of human dignity, possibility, and hope.

Imagine if we'd done that.

We could have done it for probably a tenth of what we spent on the Iraq war - and that expense would actually have improved our security and made us a stronger, safer, better country.

Sigh....

Spend a billion on your own people to bring them out of misery and give them an ounce of hope and it's "welfare waste". Spend a trillion, all of it borrowed from China at interest, leaving it to our grandchildren to pay off, to bomb the shit out of a million foreigners, making no distinction between killing soldiers, women, or children, and that's "Christian".

Republicans are fucked up.

[bleedingheart]

17. I could not agree with you more

we should have minded our own business and fixed problems rather than create more...

[mainegreen]

10. Chuck E. Cheese serves liquor????

:wtf:

[JVS]

15. In limited quantities and at high prices.

[kick-ass-bob]

22. I couldn't imagine stepping into one without liquor.

:P

[Left Is Write]

26. Beer, anyway.

[Akoto]

11. Maybe it's just me, but ...

I never found it particularly appealing that a restaurant's mascot was a rat. Sanitation issues, anyone? :P

[Elidor]

12. Next we go after Olive Garden!

:D

[ironflange]

19. Close them both down?

If that happens, the last great purveyor of fine Italian cuisine will be Pizza Hut.

[redqueen]

13. What the crap?

:crazy:

[bertha katzenengel]

14. I'm not surprised. I've been to chuck e. cheese in one of the "safest"

towns in the U.S., and the behavior of the parents there was enough for me to take my nephew outta there in a hurry.

[anarch]

18. I'd say the first thing they should deal with is their giant rodent problem

I mean, I will not eat anywhere that has 6-foot tall rats roaming the premises.

[underpants]

21. God I can't wait to have to go there so I can make fun of everyone

Let's see I should be about a year or so away from that lovely experience.

[xchrom]

24. a 40 person brawl at a chuckie cheese?

this is an out take from borat right?

[QMPMom]

25. If I ever have to go to a Chuck E. Cheese again, I will already be

drunk when I get there. It will make the whole experience much more enjoyable and much less traumatic.

DD got in the ball cage and refused to come out. Our very skinny neighbor had to go in and retrieve her. She then proceeded to throw the temper tantrum of all temper tantrums and knock DH's glasses off. Then, while he had her in a bear hug, to prevent her from getting away and getting back into the ball cage, she managed to get her feet planted firmly in the waistband of his pants - and pull them down. Blind and pantless is not a position you want to put my DH in. Especially in public at a child's birthday party.

It was not experience any of us want to repeat and would have gone down much better had liquor been inolved.