Garden Grove Must Pay $111,000 to Owners of Closed Gay-Oriented Bar

The city of Garden Grove must pay $111,000 to the owners of a gay-oriented bar whose lawsuit claimed that they lost patrons and had to close because police were harassing customers, a federal court jury ruled Monday.

The bar, Mac’s Landing, closed on June 1, 1985. Owners Don and Nancy McGuire blamed a month-long police crackdown on “cruising” along a strip of Garden Grove Boulevard frequented by gays.

Garden Grove officials, saying they had worked hard to establish a strong relationship with the city’s gay community, said they would seek a new trial.

Court records show that Garden Grove police beefed up their patrols in the 8500 block of Garden Grove Boulevard between April 22 and May 30, 1985, at the request of local merchants concerned about the number of armed robberies and solicitations for prostitution.

Filed Suit in ’85

Mac’s Landing, a beer and wine bar next to an adult bookstore, opened in November, 1984. In March, 1985, the McGuires filed suit against the city, alleging that Garden Grove police officers were harassing customers by taking flash photographs of patrons leaving the bar and discouraging people from entering the bar by parking a patrol car just outside the door.

The suit also alleged that uniformed officers walked inside the bar to observe patrons for up to 20 minutes at a time.

McGuire claimed that the police frightened patrons away, causing “severe and irreparable economic harm,” to his business, according to the suit filed in Los Angeles federal court. The city strongly denied the allegations before and during the trial, saying it was not “engaging in selective enforcement of laws but was attempting to regulate criminal activity in a proper manner. . . .” Garden Grove plans to appeal Monday’s verdict by filing a motion for a new trial and other motions, according to Thomas B. Cummings, the city’s outside counsel.

“The police are very upset about this,” Cummings said. “They feel they’ve done quite a bit to have a good relationship with the gay community. Chief (Francis) Kessler has worked quite a few years to establish a good rapport with the gay community.”

Kessler declined to comment on the verdict. “At this point, he doesn’t have anything to say,” said a police spokeswoman.

Garden Grove gay leaders agreed that in recent months relations with the Police Department have been very good.

“There has been a substantial change in police attitudes,” said Werner Kuhn, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center of Orange County, which has its offices in Garden Grove. “I would hope that is a result of the leadership in the Police Department.”

In the past, Kuhn said, the police “somehow took it upon themselves to be the guardians of public virtue or morals and were overzealous in approaching gay people who were out meeting each other.”

But now, he said, the gay community has a good working relationship with the Police Department.