Two apparent homicides said to be associated with a club at 218 S. Blake St. have prompted city officials to look into the club's operation with some saying the business should be considered a nuisance and closed.
At 4:30 on Christmas morning, police heard gunshots along Blake Street and then were called to Earnesto's in response to a shooting. When they arrived, they found 24-year-old Deondrick Clark, who had been shot and was in a car. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
In early October, 18-year-old Christian Mayzes' last words before he died were that he had been shot while in the club.
"This is totally mind-boggling," said City Council Member Ivan Whitfield. "We need to take strong action and send a message to other club owners and put some stress in their lives. We cannot stand a third homicide."
The building is owned by Cedric Maxwell, who could not be reached. But city officials were unclear about who operates the club, although the "Earnesto's" name on the building apparently refers to a previous operation at the location and does not appear to be what the club is called now.
Lt. David Defoor said records show an uptick in calls associated with the club. From 2015 until September 2020, police responded to five calls. From then until late December, there had been 13 calls, which did not include Mayzes' death since he was found a short distance away from the club.
The more recent calls, Defoor said, include cases involving domestic violence, theft and terroristic threatening and a shooting. The lieutenant said police consider the club a "hangout" and routinely have problems with what happens on the club's premises.
"Every officer I've spoken to says that the club is a nuisance," Defoor said. "It's chaotic every time they go over there."
Asked if there were any clubs in town that were worse, as far as the police were concerned, Defoor said "not that I'm aware of."
"After the Christmas shooting, officers were all venting about how bad that place has gotten," he said. "That speaks for itself."
Mayor Shirley Washington said late last week that she had been speaking with city officials about the club and had turned to Interim Police Chief Lloyd Franklin Sr. for help.
"What do we do?" she said, repeating what she asked Franklin. "We have to do something."
Washington said she had hoped that when the club opened, it would be a "wholesome, positive establishment."
"I'm saddened by the fact that it has turned into something like this," she said. "Who runs it now? We don't know."
Washington said Franklin's plan is not to address just the club at 218 S. Blake St. but to assess all of the clubs in town to make sure they are in compliance with city regulations and are up to date on their taxes and licensing.
"That is something the chief has guaranteed me that we will do," Washington said. "The ABC [state Alcoholic Beverage Control] has also offered their assistance."
The mayor, however, had her own thoughts about the club.
"In my personal opinion, I think it should be considered a nuisance in the community and should be closed," she said. "I think it's a hangout that caters to this type of activity in the community and disturbs the community, and we don't need that type of activity here. We don't need a nuisance in our environment."
Going forward, the club should have security cameras and more security in general, Washington said.
"We need to have a close eye on them," Washington said. "The chief said there would be extra patrols in that area."
Council Member Joni Alexander, who is also a member of the city's Public Safety Committee, said that closing the club might be necessary but that taking that step might not fix the problem.
"Let's say it is a nuisance," she said. "How would closing it be a solution if those same people are going to go somewhere else to congregate such as a vacant lot or gas station? I do think this conversation should be had to keep people safe."
But Alexander said the city should get ahead of such potential problems and not wait until there are killings to take action.
"It shouldn't take homicides to put fail-safes into place," she said. "We know the problem spots. It shouldn't take the loss of life to get us to the point where we're trying to figure this out."
The city's action against a club might be based on the number of citations it received, Alexander said, for example.
"Basically, their parking lot is unsafe," Alexander said, referring to the club. "We need to keep people safe. If the city can't find a solution to what's going on at a club, then we put the responsibility for a solution squarely on the shoulders of the owner. And if they can't do something, then we take the drastic action as far as shutting them down. But this is less about the location than the type of crowd they cater to."
As for the recent homicides, both at the club and elsewhere in Pine Bluff, Alexander said there was usually a backstory to the incidents.
"A lot of this stuff is not a shocker," she said. "There are a bunch of layers to it."
In some cases, she said, people who become homicide victims had been responsible for killing other people.
"Not all of them but a lot of them," she said. "But that's not the part of the story that people talk about."
Whitfield said the activity at the club "sounds like it's out of control." He said that, when he was police chief, such incidents in and around a club would have prompted the police department to immediately look at what city licenses a club had to operate and then to pull those licenses in order to "get the owner's attention."
"We would have done that in a heartbeat," he said. "And when those clubs were allowed to reopen, we would have been checking on them not once a week but two and three times a week. This community never should have to experience what has been happening there."