BY MICHAEL ACKER
Staff Writer
SAYREVILLE – Another night of fighting and alleged gunfire at the Colosseum nightclub has prompted the borough to revoke its liquor license.
Early Monday morning, just eight days after police responded to fighting at the Routes 9/35 nightclub, Sayreville and South Amboy officers responded to another violent scene. When Police Chief Edward Szkodny arrived at the club, he ordered the business to immediately close for investigative purposes.
“Preliminary investigation by the Sayreville Police Department and statements of witnesses revealed that fights began inside the club and shots were in fact fired in the parking lot,” Detective Mathew Bandurski wrote in a press release Tuesday.
Club security reportedly denied that gunshots were fired.
Police arrived to find patrons scattered throughout the parking lot. Officers broke up several fights and cleared the club and the parking lot of all patrons, police said.
No arrests were made and no injuries reported in the incident, which is under investigation.
Council President Thomas Pollando said the Colosseum failed to meet the safety conditions and requirements set by Sayreville officials and the special task force formed to examine the safety and security of local nightclubs.
“It is clear that the owners of the Colosseum are making no attempt to adhere to the regulations set forth by the task force to increase the safety and security of the club,” Pollando, a Democrat, wrote in a press release. “This incident is proof that the violence will only continue to escalate if this matter is not addressed and this establishment is not closed down.”
Republican Mayor Kennedy O’Brien called for the revocation of the liquor license last week after violence in the parking lot led to three injuries on Aug. 5.
Pollando said the Aug. 5 incident may have involved members of the Bloods street gang. Police reported that a large group of men arrived at the club in limousines around 1 a.m. and were refused admission at the advice of police. The men reportedly left and returned with baseball bats, injuring a security guard and destroying property at the front of the club.
“We have been told by other towns and other counties when they have information on when certain groups come into town,” Pollando said. “Detectives come into the clubs and make them aware of the situation.”
The Colosseum, which had become a strip club with live dancing in recent years, did not return a call seeking comment for this story. Its answering machine still advertised “a drag show” for last night, though the borough shut down the club.
Problems began last year, when a riot involving 80 patrons was reported at the club, a month after a Shrewsbury man survived a gunshot wound to the stomach that was inflicted by an unknown suspect there.
In May, the club was temporarily shut down after gunshots were fired in the parking lot.
The owner of the business later agreed to more than a dozen police-recommended conditions before the Borough Council renewed the club’s liquor license.
The gun-related violence has had officials concerned that another shooting death will take place in town. Che Broadus, 18, of Union, was shot and killed outside the now-defunct Krome nightclub in 2004.
“I don’t want history to repeat itself in Sayreville,” O’Brien told the Suburban.
O’Brien wrote a letter to the council criticizing its refusal to adopt his proposed ordinance earlier this year that would give a business three chances before its liquor license is pulled. The so-called “three-strikes ordinance” was met with skepticism by members of the all-Democrat council.
“I am not going to give anyone three shots at me,” Pollando told the Suburban. “If it is that bad, we’ll take care of the first incident. We’ll do it on a case-by-case basis. We can’t afford to wait for three opportunities.”
The task force that the Democrats formed in response to violence at borough clubs has not issued any report to the public and has been ineffective in deterring these incidents, O’Brien wrote in his letter to the council Monday.
“It definitely did not prevent the gunfire at the Colosseum on Aug. 6 and the riot that required three police departments to control,” O’Brien said.
“It is also obvious that the council’s task force was just an example of government shuffling off a problem to a committee in the hope [that] it will go away,” O’Brien added.
Pollando responded that the task force came up with restrictions that the Colosseum failed to meet with this latest incident.
“The task force, which includes the [police] chief, the lieutenant and the captain as well as the council people and the D.A. [district attorney], came up with 18 conditions,” Pollando said. “There are no guarantees in anything in life, but at least the task force came up with 18 conditions.”
Pollando said the club failed to meet the conditions of its liquor license.
“Obviously, the security that they had in place wasn’t good enough and it allowed the situation to get out of control,” Pollando said. “Gunfire was bad enough.”
O’Brien said the club posed an obvious threat to the community.
“The lives of the patrons, the lives of responding police officers, the lives of the people living in the vicinity of the club are all at risk,” O’Brien said. “And I applaud the chief of police for being aggressive and proactive in protecting their lives.”
The Colosseum is reportedly now up for sale for roughly $12 million.