KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was 10:30 a.m. on a recent weekday when Erika Bannks of Kansas City walked out of Big D’s Liquor & Grocery, at 35th Street and Prospect Avenue, with a few goodies in her bag, including several shot-sized, 50-milliliter bottles of 99 Gold tequila.

“I’m stressed and depressed,” Bannks said, standing feet from a patch of grass strewn with dozens of empty mini liquor bottles. “I need a shot in the morning, a shot in the afternoon and a shot a night. I need my 99 Golds. I got three kids. I got no help.”

Bannks’ mini bottles are also the kind — along with single-serve containers of beer and 40-ounce or less bottles of malt liquor — whose sale the Kansas City Council may soon decide to ban in midtown, downtown, Westport, along Prospect Avenue, and in other specific area should an amended ordinance sponsored by Mayor Quinton Lucas and Councilwoman Melissa Robinson pass.

The amendment is scheduled for discussion on Tuesday, March 31, before the city’s Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee.

It is also one that multiple liquor store owners — along with their customers — say will not only damage their businesses severely, but also would be useless in solving the problems of crime or other disruptions city lawmakers claim that the mini bottles exacerbate.

“This is not going to solve crime,” said Joe Sacco, whose family has owned and operated Grand Slam Liquor & Convenience at 6th Street and Grand Boulevard for 36 years. “There’s more things to it: There’s drugs. There’s violence. There’s homelessness. . .

“I mean, there are guys walking in here with AKs on their hips. And they’re not buying 50s.”

Ronald Turner, manager of the Short Stop Convenience at 4048 Prospect Ave., whose front counter is stacked with minis, thinks banning the sale of the tiny bottles, along with single containers of beer and malt liquor, could lead to a negative unintended consequence — people drinking in larger volumes.

“Even if they did ban it, the same people that are buying shots are just maybe going to do crime, or do whatever they have to do, to get a bigger bottle,” Turner said. “It’s not going to help the problem.”

“The problem a lot of these stores have is they’re not able to control their corner,” Turner continued. “They’re not able to keep the people off of their corner. They’re not able to stop them from drinking in front of their store, selling drugs in front of the store, whatever it is they’re doing in front of their store.

“I’m five blocks away from where the problem is. But I don’t have those problems. You never see anybody on my corner. There’s nobody selling dope. There’s nobody standing there drinking, nobody using drugs. But you go three blocks down, and it’s all hell breaking loose. So it’s got to be them that’s the problem.”

Bans only is certain areas

The amendment, proposed in February, does not aim to ban the sale of single-serve beers, malt liquor or minis (also known as nips, shooters, shots or airplane bottles) across the entire city.

It instead would ban the sale of 1) single-serve beers or malt beverages in individual containers of 40 ounces or less, 2) any single-serve distilled spirit of 200 milliliters (6.8 ounces) or less, including half-pints and minis, with an alcohol content of 35% or more, in set areas.

The ban would affect stores in what the amendment had designated to be problematic “retail alcohol impact areas,” that are defined as parts of the city that have been “adversely affected by chronic inebriation and/or illegal activity correlated with liquor sales or consumption.”

The areas are:

•Midtown extending from 27th Street to the north and 47th Street (Emanual Cleaver II Blvd.) to the south, State Line Road to the west and Troost Avenue to the east.

•Downtown (The Central Business District) extending from the Missouri River to the north, 18th Street to the south, Broadway to the west and the collection of highways, Interstates 29, 35, 70 and Bruce R. Watkins to the east.

•Independence Avenue Corridor extending, approximately, from Gladstone Boulevard to the north, East 18th Street to the south, Forest Avenue to the west and Interstate 435 to the east.

•Prospect Avenue-Southeast Corridor from 23rd Street to the north, I-435 to the south, The Paseo to the west, and Jackson Avenue to the east.

•Blue Ridge Corridor from 83rd Street to the north, 119th Street to the south, Hickman Hills Drive, Bennington Avenue and Newton Avenue to the west and James A. Reed Road, Eastern Avenue and Food Lane to the east.

In introducing the amendment on Feb. 26, the mayor, in a release, said, “Residents in these neighborhoods have shared real concerns about violence, public disorder, loitering, and how these issues affect their safety and quality of life.

“In some areas, these conditions have persisted for far too long. The ordinance is a targeted response to help address specific retail practices that research shows can unintentionally contribute to neighborhood instability.”

The Urban League of Greater Kansas City and some neighborhood associations have come out in support of the ordinance.

“As neighbors in the Santa Fe community, we’ve seen firsthand how these retail practices impact our daily lives,” Marquita Taylor, representing the Santa Fe Neighborhood Association, said in a prepared statement. “We appreciate city leaders taking resident concerns seriously and working toward solutions that will help restore safety and pride in our neighborhoods.”

On Friday, Lucas, speaking to The Star, reinforced his commitment to the ordinance, despite blowback.

“Look, I grew up in neighborhoods that saw this this kind of challenge,” he said. “Walking up and down Prospect, walking up and down Troost as a kid: You see the trash. You see, frankly, the alcoholism that is growing in certain intersections at 35th and Prospect, where we’ve had years of issues.

“And part of it is because people can go get very cheap liquors that are sold in these single packages and, frankly, go back, panhandle a little bit, and go right back. It creates this repeat cycle of harm in a community.

“And so, look, I understand that everybody wants to make some dollars, particularly exploitative dollars, in my opinion, off certain communities. But I think a lot of people have said enough. Enough of the trash. Enough of the nuisance crimes, enough of the violence that arises from it.”

What does the research say?

Both the mayor and the amendment language mention research regarding single-serve alcohol.

The amendment says research shows that ‘selling cheap, single serve high alcohol content can unintentionally contribute to unsafe and unstable neighborhood conditions, including but not limited to increased crime, including violent crime, increased and/or repeated calls for police and emergency services, increased loitering, public intoxication, public disorder and high levels of litter.”

But little to no peer-reviewed research exists on whether banning sale of 50 milliliter liquor bottles has an appreciable effect on reducing crime.

Most existing studies have examined bans on the sale of malt liquor.

One of the most cited studies is from 2017, “The Impact of Single-Container Malt Liquor Sales Restrictions on Urban Crime.” The authors, from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, looked at the effect of bans in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.

The results in both cities were scattered and dependent on the specific city areas. In two of six Minneapolis areas, overall crime decreased 43% and 56% respectively, while, in all other areas, overall crime rose. In one area it went up 13%. While vandalism decreased in five of six study areas, disorderly conduct was too common to show any significant decrease.

In Washington, the researchers found little difference because crime in the city overall rose during the study period.

In 2018, the researchers expanded their study to look at 10 cities. Their result: “For individual crimes (e.g. assaults, vandalism, disorderly conduct) we found mixed results as more restrictive malt liquor policies were significantly associated with decreases as well as increases in crime.”

Grocery store exempted seen as unfair

Andy Noohan, a partner in Mike’s Wine & Spirits in Westport, argues that the ordinance is too broad, blanketing numerous liquor stores as if they all face or cause similar problems. If the city is to act, he said, it needs to target problems players.

“Number one,” Noohan said, “I am all for, and our team is all for, the public safety piece. I agree with Quinton and everybody making the city safe.

“That said, in our part of Westport, this isn’t a problem that needs to be addressed. I don’t think getting rid of small liquor and single-serve beers is going to increase public safety in our neighborhood. . . .I think there are license holders that are problems. You go down to some of these gas stations, and there’s people just hanging out in the parking lot playing music. There’s a lot of things going on — drug dealing, loitering.

“If you look at our customers, you just spend a day in our store, the people buying these shots, they’re normal people: attorneys, construction workers, painters, whatever, teachers. They’re just old ladies that are making a rum cake. Single beers. The single beers we sell are, like, starting at $4 a beer. The majority of them are like craft beers that people are sharing with friends and they’re having one serving.”

Noohan’s second complaint, he said: “They’re letting groceries sell the same items.”

The amendment, indeed, says the restrictions “shall not apply to retail package license for premises operating as a grocery store.”

“You go over to the grocery store, look behind the counter over by the Lotto tickets, and they sell the same items. So that doesn’t make any sense,” Noohan said.

A half-mile from Noohan’s store sits Cosentino’s Sun Fresh Market, which sells liquor including mini bottles.

Ryan Beal, a customer at Big D’s on Prospect, made the same point.

“If you stop selling shots, you still sell the half-pints and pints, fifths, half-gallons,” he said. “What are you solving? You solve nothing. . . .You can get a shot anywhere. You can go get a shot at the grocery store. I just don’t understand it.”

Up on Independence Avenue, Andew Sappington, a nurse stopping in at Top Notch Liquors after his work shift, said, “I don’t think it’s going to solve anything. People who want to drink are going to drink.”

“The shooters is just a convenient way of doing it,” he continued. “It gets you down the road. So can get a pint. So you can a half-pint. Where do you stop at this point? . . .You’re going to have the same issues. It’s just going to be different bottle sizes.”

He believes the ordinance is an ill-conceived “back end” solution to a different problem.

“I think the problem they’re trying to address is crime and violence. But it’s not going to solve any issue. It’s not going to solve littering. It’s not going to solve crime.”

Arshad Choudary, who owns Top Notch, 2119 Independence Ave., said, simply, that it will devastate his business and hurt his customers.

“They’re trying to go in the wrong way to hurt the business,” Choudary said. “Instead of enforcing that one (proposed ordinance), why aren’t they making the city safer by enforcing the traffic laws, make the streets safer?

“This is like low-income people. I mean, what is the alternative? They want us to sell the big, big size liquor? And what are we going to do, ask them to bring their own cups?”

Choudary does a brisk business in mini bottles and single-serve beer.

“If you look there, I have 11 doors of coolers,” Choudary said. “And if I don’t sell the beers, what am I going to put in there, milk?”

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