Update: Wednesday evening, Wilkes-Barre Health Department, Wilkes-Barre Code Enforcement, Wilkes-Barre Police Department, and PA Liquor Control Enforcement (LCE) conducted a joint inspection at Locals bar. After finding numerous violations, they temporarily shut down the bar and an apartment on the second floor of the building until violations are corrected.
WILKES-BARRE -- When two women were shot outside a bar in Wilkes-Barre this weekend, neighbors wanted to hold the new mayor to his campaign promise to shut down nuisance bars.
Tony George has been mayor for less than a month, and on Wednesday told Newswatch 16 what he really promised and what he's doing about it.
When two women were shot outside Locals bar on Poplar Street in Wilkes-Barre this weekend, neighbors looked for help from their newly elected mayor Tony George.
"I voted for him because he was supposed to shut it down," Harry Heck of Wilkes-Barre said.
Mayor George says his campaign promise was to make the city's neighborhoods safer and he couldn't close the bar down if he wanted to. That effort would have to come from the Luzerne County District Attorney's Office.
The mayor asked the district attorney's office to take steps to shut down Locals, but according to the mayor, there have not been enough complaints and violations reported to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.
"They don't have close to enough complaints on the bar to do that, but there are other ways we can work on it," George said.
One other way includes increasing police presence in the neighborhood surrounding Locals bar.
"We're going to start doing saturation patrols as soon as the time is right," George added.
"He said he would take care of the nuisance bars in the area," Heck said.
Days after the shooting, we asked Heck if the mayor really made a promise he can't keep, a promise to shut Locals bar down.
"He didn't specifically say the one down on the corner on Poplar Street here. He was going to take care of the nuisance bars."
Harry Heck is counting on the mayor who grew up in this neighborhood.