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City Commissioner: Orlando Tragedy Reason To Reevaluate Bar Hours

Commissioner Ziffer
City of Tallahassee

One city commissioner wants to reevaluate Tallahassee bar hours following the shooting in Orlando.

City Commissioner Gil Ziffer says he’d like to hold a discussion with the commission and police chief about whether Tallahassee bars should be allowed to remain open until 4 a.m. Some commissioners and the mayor are pushing back against Ziffer saying the tragedy in Orlando took place because of a bad actor, not bar hours. But Ziffer says it’s not that simple.

"Clearly it has to do with someone in this particular case who was probably very deeply disturbed. We don’t know what the exact motives were, but it was done in a bar and it was done in the wee hours and I don’t think we can write it all off as a bad actor. I think we have to write it off as a bad actor who sieved an opportunity that was at a time we could avoid,” Ziffer says.

Gun fire first erupted during the Orlando shooting just after 2 a.m. Under current rules, Tallahassee bars must stop serving alcohol at 2, but can stay open several hours later.

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Regan McCarthy is the Assistant News Director for WFSU Public Media. Before coming to Tallahassee, Regan graduated with honors from Indiana University’s Ernie Pyle School of Journalism. She worked for several years for NPR member station WFIU in Bloomington, Ind., where she covered local and state government and produced feature and community stories.

Phone: (850) 645-6090 | rmccarthy@fsu.edu

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