Dancing to a Troubled Beat : Authorities Say Fatal Shooting Underscores Problems at Red Onion, but the Chain’s President Objects

The drinks are cheap. The music is hot. The dance floor is packed.

“Dollar Drink Night” and other promotions at the West Covina Red Onion draw hundreds of young adults from throughout the San Gabriel Valley--and beyond--eager to party.

On a recent Wednesday, police say it also drew four short-tempered young men, who got into a parking lot argument. At the end, gunshots were fired and one man lay fatally wounded in the chest, another bleeding from a bullet in the stomach.

“This is the kind of thing the Police Department has been wanting to avoid,” West Covina City Manager Jim Starbird said. “This is what we had been fearful of.”

Complaints of drunkenness, auto accidents and fights have made West Covina police appear like regulars at the popular nightclub and restaurant just off the San Bernardino Freeway.

From July, 1991, to this June, officers were summoned to the Red Onion 223 times, a frequency greater than every other night, Police Chief Ron Holmes said. At times, city streets were empty of patrol cars because all seven or eight units on watch were sent to yet another fight at the Red Onion, he said.

West Covina is not alone. Throughout Southern California, Red Onion restaurants spell trouble, authorities say.

The chain is the only one in the Southland on which a state agency maintains a separate file. It contains 68 different accusations, 47 of them sustained, against 14 Red Onion restaurants for violations of liquor laws in the past 15 years, said Jerry Jolly, deputy division chief of the regional state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control office.

“I don’t think there’s a Red Onion in Southern California that hasn’t received a complaint from law enforcement,” Jolly said. “They have a history of violating ABC laws.”

But Ignacio Del Rio, president of International Onion Inc., the Carson-based corporation that runs the chain, rebuts those statistics. He blames state officials for the chain’s troubled image.

“In the past, we have been picked on by the ABC because of the magnitude of the business,” Del Rio said. “We’re the No. 1 chain in Southern California. When a state agency with a limited budget wants to make an example of what restaurants can and cannot do, they pick on the Red Onion.”

Starting from a single Westchester restaurant in 1949, the chain has expanded from Thousand Oaks to San Diego. In the 1970s, it added entertainment, which boosted its profits and its profile.

Before the recession, the chain grossed sales of $60 million annually, Del Rio said. The restaurants offer weekend brunches and weekday business lunches, plus dancing for thousands of young people in their 20s who spend the night under strobe lights, in front of in-house video cameras and on elevated dance platforms in the restaurants’ expansive clubs.

“I don’t think there is any other chain you can compare the Red Onion to,” Del Rio said Tuesday night as he stood outside the West Covina restaurant and watched the crowd line up to enter.

Corporate head since last September, Del Rio concedes the chain has had problems. Under a 1986 settlement with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, discrimination claims prompted Red Onion to pay $500 each to 39 minority customers who were turned away.

But it is a responsible business, Del Rio said, employing nearly 2,000 and participating in community organizations.

Fashionably dressed in a dark, double-breasted suit, Del Rio, 33, looks like a Continental version of comedian-talk show host Jay Leno. He drives a black Mercedes-Benz sedan and lives on the Palos Verdes Peninsula--a big leap for the former illegal immigrant from Zamora, Mex., who, in 1980, washed dishes at the West Covina Red Onion for $2.65 and hour. Del Rio said he planned to earn enough money to buy a truck and return to his native Michoacan. Instead, he fell in love with the United States--and the Red Onion.

Yet despite his success, he retains a touch of underdog resentment, particularly at West Covina police who he says have targeted the Red Onion because of its largely Latino clientele.

“They think everyone who’s Hispanic is a gang member,” Del Rio said. “But these are hard-working kids who come over here to have fun.”

With police headquarters directly across the street from the Garvey Avenue restaurant, officers routinely cruise by. Thus, the Red Onion is an easier target than area night spots farther away, Del Rio said.

“We don’t have this problem in Thousand Oaks, or Marina del Rey,” he said, a claim supported by state officials. “It’s the same company, the same product and the same marketing.”

Indeed, since 1981, the West Covina restaurant has been penalized eight times for liquor law violations, more than any other Red Onion. State officials say one or two violations in that time period would be typical for most restaurants. The violations include narcotics on the premises, operating after closing hours, gambling, and serving alcohol to minors or to obviously drunk customers. The restaurant paid $20,500 in fines and was banned from serving alcohol a total of 75 days.

It is a pattern the restaurant has followed since its opening, alternating cycles of compliance and noncompliance, Starbird said. But the latest cycle, seven months long, has been more violent than others, topped by the Sept. 9 slaying.

Although Del Rio argues that no one saw any of the men involved in the incident inside the Red Onion that night, police say the four were leaving the restaurant about 2 a.m. when they clashed.

John Joe Gregory, 22, of Los Angeles was killed. Borman L. Dominguez, 22, of Pasadena, is recovering from his wound.

The assailants, described only as two Latinos who fled in a black pickup, have not yet been identified or arrested.

The shooting will be taken into account by state officials, who may file yet another citation against the restaurant, Jolly said.

Meanwhile, West Covina officials plan to switch the restaurant from operating under an outdated cabaret license to a use permit, which would allow more control by requiring public hearings before the Planning Commission at each renewal.

More control is also the aim of the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, which last month filed a nuisance abatement lawsuit in Superior Court against the Woodland Hills Red Onion. Since 1977, state officials have filed accusations against that restaurant 12 times, but only four were sustained. In 1991, the Los Angeles Police Commission stepped in and imposed 24 operating conditions on the restaurant, conditions that are routinely ignored, police said.

The result has been police calls to break up parking lot fights, arrest drunks and stop vandalism, said LAPD Vice Investigator Kris Pitcher.

“This is basically a general crowd problem,” Pitcher said. “But the restaurant is basically not handling it.”

Other problem locales include the Palm Desert Red Onion, against which the state levied penalties seven times since 1984. State officials were on the verge of revoking the restaurant’s license when it closed June 28, Jolly said.

Similarly, the Red Onion on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles--against which state officials took action five times since 1980, three of them sustained--closed abruptly May 18 after restrictive operating hours were imposed.

Still ongoing are problems with the 3-year-old San Diego Red Onion, against which the state has taken action six times for violations that include customer fights, nude entertainment and dancing on bar tops. Two of the actions are pending or are being appealed.

In 1990, the Redondo Beach Red Onion general manager was arrested after fighting with a customer. The year before at the same restaurant, a patron died of brain injuries after a parking lot fight.

Del Rio and his attorney, Richard Saltsman, insist the chain is well-run but that the incidents arise from the high volume and the nature of the entertainment business. Even with uniformed security guards and high-profile employees, customer behavior cannot be controlled at all times, they said.

“There are shootings in the mall. And 21 people got killed in Los Angeles County one weekend,” Del Rio said. “But why is it that they focus on the Red Onion?”

It’s an attitude apparently shared by his customers who, a week after the West Covina shooting, packed the club.

“I figured it (the shooting) happened last week, so it probably won’t happen this week,” said Kim Civitak, 21, of Whittier, laughing at a table shared with three friends.

Jerry Mendez, 21, of Los Angeles, a regular on Tuesdays and Thursdays, was similarly unconcerned about the recent violence.

“It’s L.A. It’s the ‘90s. It always happens,” he said.