State Treats Tavern Owner as a Criminal in Drug Case : Appeal: Because a bartender sold cocaine at a Hermosa Beach bar, its license has been revoked, even though the operator was unaware of the activity.

Hermosa Beach tavern owner Robert McAlinden is not a criminal, but the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is treating him like one.

The state agency last March revoked McAlinden’s license to sell liquor at Bestie’s, a popular English restaurant and sports bar, after a former bartender was convicted of selling cocaine to patrons.

Authorities acknowledge that there is no evidence McAlinden--who has remained in business pending his appeal of the revocation--knew that his employee was dealing drugs. In fact, McAlinden took steps to ensure that no laws were broken in his pub.

He installed three cameras above the bar to monitor transactions between patrons and employees; he hired an off-duty Hermosa Beach police officer to work as a door host on weekends; he even posted signs in the bathrooms warning that illegal activities will be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”

But state officials were not impressed by McAlinden’s precautions, even though the drug bust was Bestie’s first. Noting that undercover agents discovered 10 drug violations at Bestie’s from May, 1989, to March, 1990, ABC officials revoked McAlinden’s license--the most severe penalty possible.

“I’m not going to sit here and argue that the world is eminently fair,” ABC attorney John McCarthy said. “But by the same token, there’s no inherent right to sell alcoholic beverages. It’s a highly regulated business, and it’s intended to protect the public. If the licensee, despite his precautions, is unsuccessful in running a clean business, maybe he needs to find a different business.”

McAlinden, a former soccer player who opened the pub in 1978 with British soccer star George Best, is not willing to lose his license without a fight.

The 46-year-old Moorpark resident and father of two, who has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bestie’s, says the loss of his liquor license is a death knell for the business.

“I haven’t committed a crime,” McAlinden said one recent afternoon as a small lunchtime crowd watched sports on television sets overhead. “It’s a ludicrous law, and I think it’s unconstitutional to expect anybody to be held accountable for someone else’s wrongdoing when you didn’t even know what they were doing.”

Although the tavern opens onto an alley behind Hermosa Avenue, the restaurant is not nearly the dive its alleyway entrance would suggest.

The comfortable main room, which is decorated with framed sport magazine covers and hanging plants, holds about 15 tables, two pool tables and four dartboards. The menu offers standard British/American fare: Fish and chips, bangers and mash, and hamburgers are among the choices.

A guest book McAlinden keeps handy shows signatures from hundreds of visitors, some from as far away as Iceland, China and Europe.

“This restaurant is known on five continents,” McAlinden boasts. “It’s a bar of international repute.”

The bar also enjoys a good reputation at the Hermosa Beach Police Department. In seven years, police have been called to Bestie’s only 35 times. A police survey showed that police were called to each of seven other bars in the city anywhere from 18 to 102 times during the same period.

“Those are not all violations committed by that business, just reports we’ve recorded there over the years,” Hermosa Beach Police Chief Steve Wisniewski said. “They’re not a major police problem. In other words, we’re not running down there every day.”

But ABC officials do not need to prove that Bestie’s is a hotbed of illegal activity to revoke McAlinden’s liquor license. Nor do they need evidence that he knew anything about his employee’s drug dealing.

According to the state Business and Professions Code, licensees are responsible for the actions of their employees--regardless of what the employer knew and when he knew it. Under the law, McAlinden “permitted” his bartender, Mark Allen Winsborough, to break the law.

McAlinden, however, thinks that he was singled out for unusually harsh punishment after previous council members lobbied the agency to “make an example” of him.

“They were definitely out to get me,” McAlinden said.

His contention troubles current council members so much that the City Council voted 3 to 2 last week to send a letter to ABC Director Jay R. Stroh clarifying the city’s position.

“It was not, and is not, the council’s desire to influence any judicial decision,” the Oct. 28 letter says. “We do not desire to ‘make an example’ of Bestie’s, nor do we desire the law to be ignored. We want McAlinden’s guilt to be decided solely on the merits of his case, and we want any judgment rendered to be appropriate to the offense.”

McCarthy denies that city officials influenced the agency’s decision to recommend Bestie’s lose its liquor license. He points out that he tried to negotiate a settlement with McAlinden that would have called for a less severe penalty but that McAlinden rejected the offer.

“I didn’t want to settle for it because I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong,” McAlinden explained. “I don’t think I could have done any more than I did. . . . I just think this is a very, very unfair statute.”