Vernon Jones may have vetoed the 2:30a bar closing time bill passed by the DeKalb County Commission last month, citing potential lost revenue, but that hasn’t stopped him from coming up with alternative means of deterring the most egregious and annoying nightclub offenders.

Connect the dots.

First, Jones vetoes the earlier closing hours bill, allowing bars in DeKalb to remain open ’til 4am, unlike neighboring Atlanta, which closes up shop at 2a.  Nightclubs and bars breath a sigh of relief.

Then comes Operation: Hammer Time.  County Police descend upon nightclubs, bars and strip clubs issuing 78 violations and making 109 arrests for things like permit violations.  Nightclubs and bars are caught off guard and begin reaching for the oxygen mask.

This was followed by the less-exciting sequel: Operation Hammer Time II where restaurants and hotels got the same treatment.

Then today the DeKalb County Zoning Board of Appeals ruled that the controversial nightclub that started this whole fiasco (Pure Atlanta) was not appropriate for C1 commercial zoning because it does not have a kitchen (and therefore cannot be considered a “restaurant”).  The board stated that nightclubs without kitchens should be grouped along places like bowling alleys and movie theaters as “recreation”.

The ruling has wide implications for any nightclub or bar in the county that doesn’t cook its own food.  If the ruling still stands after appeal, many nightclubs and bars could be shutdown.

Just like after Operation Hammer Time, county officials are playing dumb to the broader implications of this ruling.

From the AJC…

Kristie Swink, spokeswoman for the county, originally said the decision was not meant to close the club and that the planning department was going to review the ruling. A day later, she said the ball was in the club’s court and it had to successfully appeal the board’s ruling or be shut down.

But ultimately, as anyone that’s followed this months-long story can see, when you begin connect all the dots, you get a picture of a CEO that wanted to use quieter, alternative methods (law enforcement, zoning board) to deter nightclubs from crossing the county line into DeKalb, instead of a highly public, blanket legislation.

Operation Hammer Time II is a snoozer.

109 citations and only 1 arrest!

And the AJC doesn’t even go for the ride along! They just summarize in a five paragraph blurb.

Here we go again.

Even Hammer knew he couldn’t repurpose “Can’t Touch This”.  But the DeKalb police are intent on wearing out this tired old phrase.

After a bar and nightclub crackdown a couple of weeks ago, which came suspiciously on the heals of CEO Vernon Jones’ veto of an earlier end to pouring hours bill, the  DeKalb police are at it again.  However, this time around the AJC is priming the public for a gripping crackdown of hotels and restaurants.

I wait with bated breath to read how the AJC sensationalizes this story without the half-naked strippers they focused on the last go round.

I smell a Pulitzer!

Apparently a three day nightclub crackdown evokes early 90’s shiny baggy pants to the DeKalb police . “Operation Hammer Time” this past weekend followed a failed attempt by the DeKalb County Commission to roll back closing hours throughout unincorporated DeKalb.

The AJC has a slightly odd feature that highlights the crackdown at Pure (Clairmont and Briarcliff), El Noa Noa (Tucker) and Decatur’s very own Pin Ups. From the first person accounts in the article, it seems like AJC’s Tim Eberly went along for the ride (Bad boys, bad boys…).

Yet the AJC reports that the rollback legislation and the Operation have nothing to do with one another.

“The operation began Friday, three days after county commissioners and their chief executive bickered over bar closing times.Commissioners voted to roll back last call in unincorporated areas by more than an hour on most nights. When DeKalb County Chief Executive Vernon Jones vetoed the measure, some commissioners accused his administration of failing to enforce laws that keep watering holes in line.

DeKalb County police this weekend said Hammer Time was not a direct response to the accusations. But spokeswoman Mekka Parish said there had been “misinformation” that police there did not enforce the law.

So a catchy, although lame, operation name plus a call ahead to the AJC, isn’t a media response to the “embarrassment” (to quote one DeKalb commissioner) revolving around rolling back serving hours in the county? Sure it isn’t. And M.C. Hammer isn’t a washed up has-been.