After Lawsuit, Cleveland Maintains It Had Right to Close Play Bar & Grill After September 7 Shooting

No more than an hour after 40 shots went off near West 10th in the Flats East Bank, Mayor Justin Bibb took out his phone to notify his cabinet.

“Shooting in flats. 5 shot. Likely to be big media incoming,” he texted his team, according to public records obtained by News 5 this week. “Need to ensure tight strong comms on our side for any incoming.”

As for the bar the alleged shooters left:

“Use every dept to shut this place down,” Bibb wrote. “If we get sued, we get sued.”

Well, they got sued.

On Wednesday, two weeks after Play Bar owner David Hill filed a civil rights complaint in the U.S. Northern District Court, Cleveland’s lawyers responded by defending Bibb’s call to shut down and board up Hill’s bar hours after shots rang out.

The city said its closure was not unlawful as Hill has claimed it was for weeks.

There have been five incidents involving police since the start of the summer, police records show, from guns being pulled out on valets (in June), to a shooting and assault on its premises (July), a “combative disorderly male” spitting on pedestrians (in August) and a robbery the same day as the shooting.

“The continued operation of this establishment created an imminent danger to the life and health of the residents and visitors of the City of Cleveland,” Public Safety Director Dornat Drummond argued in a letter attached to the city’s response, “which required an immediate order to shut down this establishment.”

“It is therefore declared that Play Bar & Grill is a nuisance,” he said.

Hill, who has framed the boarding-up on social media as an attack on Black businesses, formalized those accusations in his original complaint on September 15. The city never gave him due process before Bibb made the call to shut him down, he argued.

“The city acted without providing [Hill] notice or an opportunity to be heard,” that complaint reads, actions that caused Hill “ongoing financial losses and reputational harm.”

“The actions of the City of Cleveland have created the public perception that [Play] is somehow responsible for the criminal actions of citizens outside of its business,” it added.

Meanwhile, the landlord of Play also canceled the establishment’s lease, noting that the alleged involvement in the shooting followed warnings about previous incidents involving alleged violence at the bar.

Hill or his attorney, Joseph Morse, could not be reached for comment by end of the day Wednesday.

A federal judge also this week rejected Play’s motion for a temporary restraining order against the closure.

But on social media, co-owners said there was a double standard at play after the subsequent shooting in the Flats East Bank the last weekend of September, where one was killed and another injured outside of Punch Bowl Social. Why, they wondered, were other businesses not immediately shut down as well?

“We’ve been closed for the past three weeks, going on four weeks, and the exact same thing happened down the street, in the exact same area,” Hill told News 5 Cleveland. “Who can they blame now?”