The Alcohol Operator’s license requests have been interesting recently. We just finished the tale of Michael and his failed quest to get a permit. The 04/14/2021 Safety and Licensing Committee featured another convicted felon hoping to be granted an Alcohol Operator’s permit.
Chief Thomas spoke and explained why the Police Department was recommending the city deny Camilo’s application. Per Lieutenant Nagel’s memo to the committee, Camilo was arrested in 2016 for crimes against children and was eventually convicted of 2 counts of Exposing a Child to Harmful Descriptions, a felony. He was originally sentenced to 3 years probation which was eventually revoked in January of 2020. The reason for the revocation was multiple violations of his probation rules on at least 4 different occasions. He was eventually sentenced and was not released from custody until April 28 of 2020, so he has been out of custody for less than a year. His convictions involved attempting to have sexual contact with a 13 girl and a 16 year old girl. During the investigation it was discovered that he propositioned sex acts with these girls on Facebook and attempted to meet with them. During the investigation it was learned that he also attempted similar acts with multiple other young girls at that time. The Police Department believes these convictions committed against children are substantially related to the sale of alcohol and display a lack of character and judgement and a targeting of vulnerable people. Being a responsible seller of alcohol requires good character and judgement, particularly around intoxicated and vulnerable people. Because of the convictions, Camilo is an habitual law offender and the police department recommends that the Council deny his application for an operator’s license.
Camilo appeared in person and spoke on his own behalf. He stated that he understood the convictions that were mentioned were severe. He understood that all of his behavior in regards to that was wrong and he was very sorry for that. He understood the reasons behind denying the operator’s license and was aware that he had not been out of incarceration for very long. “How long will he stay out of jail” was what he would ask himself if he was in the committee’s position.
That being said, when he initially asked his probation officer if he could get a bartending license she had said, “okay” and then apparently did a 180 because she did not realize that getting a bartending license would mean he would be serving alcohol even though he straight out told her that it would. So he pursued it because she said it was okay and now he was at the committee meeting hoping to get his license. Getting his operator’s license would allow him to become shift lead at his work and would allow him to make more money in order to pay probation fees and other things and help him be more successful with life.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) reminded Camilo that whatever happened at the committee meeting was simply a recommendation and the final decision would be made at the Common Council meeting.
Camilo said he understood.
They opened the floor up for questions from committee members.
Alderperson Kaite Van Zeeland (District 5) wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that Camilo’s boss sent an email through the system shortly before the meeting. It read: “Please support Camilo S________ in recommending him to get his bartender’s license approved. Camilo is an extremely hard worker, breaks no rules, and needs to get his bartenders license in order to keep his shift leader position. Thank you.” His employer was Paul VanderLinden, the owner of Muncheez Pizza.
There was a motion to deny the application.
Alderperson Van Zeeland wanted to ask another question. She wondered how long he had been working at this job.
Camilo said he was released near the end of April 2020 and started working for Paul VanderLinden a month or two after that which would have been sometime in June.
There were no other questions so the committee voted on the motion to deny the application. It was a tie 2-2 with Alderpersons Siebers and Matt Reed (District 8) in favor of denying and Alderpersons VanZeeland and Alex Schultz (District 9) opposed.
Alderperson Siebers asked the attorney where they went from there.
The attorney said the motion to deny didn’t pass so they were stuck at a 2-2 deadlock. They could try an affirmative motion to approve the license and the likely outcome of that would also be a 2-2 deadlock. He thought the item would go to the Council as a recommendation to deny because no motion to approve passed.
Alderperson Siebers as if any committee members had input in terms of what they wanted. He then said that the other thing they could do was hold the item until the next committee meeting [which would be after the new Alderpersons come on the Council] at which point their might be a different committee makeup and a different outcome. [Of note, the committee usually has 5 people on it, but Kyle Lobner the outgoing Alderperson for District 13 was excused from this meeting.]
Alderperson Schultz made a motion to hold until the next committee meeting on 04/28/2021.
That motion passed 3-1.
So, why is this so interesting? It turns out that on the day of the Safety and Licensing Committee meeting, the Post Crescent ran a story regarding Paul VanderLinden the owner of Muncheez Pizza, Camilo’s employer and character witness, who had emailed the committee and asked for them to approve the license. Apparently, Mr. VanderLinden has been “charged with skimming about $800,000 from the restaurant’s receipts and using part of it to pay cash wages to his employees.”
As long as the employees were still reporting those cash wages on their taxes, they themselves probably weren’t doing anything wrong. But, one does have to wonder if Camilo was in fact reporting that money.
Beyond that, at a more basic level, his one character witness has proved to be completely untrustworthy and the place where he is working is now suspect. Obviously, given that he’s been out of jail less than a year after being convicted of charges related to Hebephilia, it was always going to be a long shot for him to receive his operator’s license. My guess is that that long shot just disappeared completely.
View full Safety and Licensing committee meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=844718&GUID=ACFDC86B-4B88-44E7-AC82-336B5D0184E8&Options=info|&Search=
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