The owner of a Los Angeles County restaurant, Bread and Barley, used his truck to block a health inspector who was harassing him for not shooing people off a public sidewalk in front of his business.
Carlos Roman says he has followed all the regulations, shutting down indoor dining to obey the government edicts Gavin Newsom alleges will stop COVID-19 from spreading. Data, however, shows that restaurants pose very little risk to the spread of the Communist Chinese virus plaguing the nation. In LA County, restaurants have been linked to only 4% of COVID transmissions. Even so, local health departments are laser-focused on ensuring that restaurants are shut down or operating below their ability to survive, while Walmarts and other big-box stores are jam-packed with shoppers.
Roman’s interaction with the LA County health inspector and police was caught on camera. “If we can’t work, he can’t work!” Roman tells a police officer who asks him to move his truck, which he had pulled behind the inspector’s car, impeding him from leaving.
According to Roman, the health department wanted him to police a public bench outside his property, where two of his customers had allegedly sat to eat the food they had bought from Bread and Barley. The ban on outdoor dining spurred the Johnny-on-the-spot health inspector to race over and cite the restaurant owner for not shooing away his customers. ABC reported:
Roman said he’s been working hard to comply with the county health order, especially during the pandemic, and was upset that his actions to stay safe were being misrepresented.”I think the pandemic is 100% real. My mom is recovering from covid right now,” he said.
To keep his restaurant open, Roman, like many other restaurant owners, spent thousands of dollars for an outdoor patio for when outdoor dining was still allowed in L.A. County.
Operating at a deficit, he says he took money from his savings to keep his staff working and continue serving customers.
“I think we have entered into the realm of a lose-lose situation,” Roman said.
Now after the confrontation with the health inspector, he is facing two $500 fines for failure to comply and interfering with the health officer.
Restaurant owners in locked-down states are desperate to survive. Unfortunately, the left has trained the public to view business owners as clones of Scrooge McDuck, rolling around on piles of money at the end of the day instead of scraping and saving and pouring personal funds into a dream that is being taken away through no fault of their own.
Most restaurant owners have at one time (or many) slept on the bar, pulled 24-hour days, worked through holidays and weekends to turn a profit. It is hard, grueling work. Not only do restaurant owners carry the weight of their own family’s future on their shoulders but the futures of everyone they employ.
“I’m desperate. Who is going to pay her car payment? Who is going to pay my cook’s rent?” Roman yelled to the health inspector, who still collects a paycheck every week for terrorizing small businesses.
Perhaps the worst part of the video is the police officer telling Roman that she does not agree with everything her department does but she must follow orders so she can support her family. Is anything more tone-deaf than not realizing her orders were to keep someone else’s family from being supported? What kind of mass hysteria is this? Who are these people who believe that destroying one family is just collateral damage in the war against a virus most people survive?
And why don’t Carlos Roman’s family and employees matter to anyone? Has no one considered that destroying a man’s business could lead to his death or the deaths of his family members or employees? People have snapped over much less. The County of LA is destroying a man’s life. Are they prepared to take responsibility for what that may lead to? Will we get a lockdown death count updated every day with the number of overdoses and suicides? Will we get a lockdown damage report with the daily number of divorces, domestic abuse crimes, depression diagnoses, financial ruin cases, and homelessness statistics?
Law-abiding people are being destroyed by lockdowns and the people who should do something about it are playing patty-cake with the tyrants. The magnanimous LA County sheriff, Alex Villanueva, came by to speak to Roman and offered him nothing but platitudes and reelection fodder for himself.
Watching the video below made me feel sick as the sheriff opined that Roman should “work with the rules we have in place right now.” What? How? His business is going to fail. He spent $12,000 on a new outdoor patio to accommodate COVID restrictions and he isn’t allowed to use it. Not only that, but he is expected to chase customers away from city property that isn’t even his or be fined by an out-of-control health department. These are not acceptable rules by any stretch of the imagination. Telling anyone to follow them and “keep working” to lift the unconstitutional restrictions is an outrageous injury.
This sheriff should be doing his job and reassuring Roman that his office will have no part in enforcing the health department’s ridiculous and burdensome demands. And Villanueva, if he had any cojones whatsoever, would arrest the health inspector for trying to enforce unconstitutional orders from the criminal governor (who should be led out of his house in handcuffs by brave sheriffs). Yet, law-abiding Roman, like most people in this great country, thinks he’s getting some encouragement from this man who has failed to protect the job creators of LA County. Poor sap.
There’s no one coming to save you, people. You’re going to have to do it yourselves and it starts with major civil disobedience. Open your doors and set your tables or close up shop forever. Those are the options. It’s time to stop screwing around with the health inspectors and start fighting back against unlawful and inhumane government edicts. Roman has a GoFundMe account and I hope he makes enough to get a team of ruthless lawyers to sue the governor and the health department out of existence.
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