Barroom Brawl : Woodland Hills: Authorities want to shut down, or at least tone down, the Red Onion nightspot. They complain of alcohol violations, fights and more.

The lights are already down--and the decibel level up--at the Woodland Hills Red Onion by the time Antoinette Flores and her two girlfriends arrive.

It is early evening, and the three have come, as they often do, to dance, to meet people, and to party.

“It’s a place to come and mingle, to enjoy yourself,” said Flores, 21, before slurping from a huge container filled with a potent cocktail called Sex on the Beach. “Everybody gets along here really good.”

Unfortunately, police and city and state officials believe some people are enjoying themselves a little too much at the popular drinking and dancing nightspot. And not everyone is getting along.

Authorities are trying to shut down the Red Onion at 6424 Canoga Ave., or at least tone things down a couple of notches by imposing restrictions. They say the establishment has been a magnet for trouble for years, and they blame the business’ management.

“I suspect they try to get as many customers as they can get in there, and then provide them with as much alcohol as they can consume,” said Sgt. Dan Hoffman, head of the vice unit at the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division. “The crux of this is they are not controlling the intake of alcohol there, and that is where it all falls apart. It is a time bomb ready to go off.”

Authorities say the problems include:

- Repeatedly serving alcohol to minors and drunk patrons, some of whom are later arrested nearby.

- Car collisions in the adjacent parking lots and on nearby streets.

- Fights inside and outside the bar, some involving deadly weapons.

- Burglaries and vandalism.

The Woodland Hills Red Onion isn’t the only one in the 14-outlet chain with problems. Authorities say management of the Mexican restaurants and bars encourages an atmosphere that spells trouble everywhere.

Recently, four short-tempered young men argued in the parking lot of the West Covina Red Onion. Gunshots were fired, and one man was killed and another badly injured. From July, 1991, to this June, officers were summoned to that Red Onion 223 times.

Red Onion outlets have been cited so frequently that the company has earned the unique status of having its own file in the regional office of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, said Jerry Jolly, deputy division chief for Southern California. The file contains 68 different accusations, 47 of which have been sustained, he said.

“I don’t think there’s a Red Onion in Southern California that hasn’t received a complaint from law enforcement,” Jolly said. “They have a history of violating ABC laws.”

Ignacio Del Rio, president of International Onion Inc., the Carson-based corporation that runs the chain, rebuts those statistics. He blames state officials for the chain’s troubled image.

“In the past, we have been picked on by the ABC because of the magnitude of the business,” Del Rio said. “We’re the No. 1 chain in Southern California. When a state agency with a limited budget wants to make an example of what restaurants can and cannot do, they pick on the Red Onion.”

Del Rio conceded the chain has had problems. Discrimination claims have prompted Red Onion to pay more than $600,000 to minority customers who say they were turned away or asked to leave restaurants because of the color of their skin.

But it is a responsible business, Del Rio said, employing nearly 2,000 people and participating in community organizations.

At the Woodland Hills location, Red Onion employees and managers also are convinced they are being picked on.

“I think it’s ridiculous that we have to put up with so much harassment,” said head bartender Jim Camuso, who has worked at the restaurant since 1977. “We don’t have dollar-drink nights, we don’t have 18-and-under nights, we don’t have ‘shooter girls’ walking around pouring shots like a lot of other places do. It’s gotten so they don’t even allow our customers to have fun anymore.”

Authorities say the Woodland Hills bar improves at times, but then gets a new manager who reverts back to encouraging a packed house full of drinkers. Camuso and others disagree.

Hoffman, the vice officer, and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus say they have met repeatedly with Red Onion managers to encourage them to clean up the problems without having to go to court.

“We keep meeting with them and they always promise that the problems will go away,” said Joy Nuell, a Picus spokeswoman, “but we keep hearing about them.”

Hoffman insists police don’t want to put the restaurant out of business.

“We just want them to run the place professionally,” he said. “What upsets me is that they keep saying we’re unfair, and that is not the case at all. And they say they are not aware of problems, which is an out-and-out lie.”

On Aug. 27, in what Hoffman called a “last straw” effort, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office filed a nuisance abatement suit in Superior Court against the Woodland Hills nightspot and its corporate owners. The suit seeks the suspension or revocation of the establishment’s license. The city plans to seek an injunction in the next few weeks that would set strict conditions on the continued operation of the restaurant pending trial of the abatement lawsuit, Deputy City Atty. Henry Burr said Friday.

Burr said four driving-under-the-influence arrests of patrons leaving the restaurant were made in the last two weeks of July. He also said police in the past two years have made at least eight arrests inside the restaurant for the sale of alcoholic beverages to minors or to people who were already drunk.

Burr and other authorities said officers from the West Valley division have reported that bar patrons have been involved in at least 16 incidents of battery and assault with a deadly weapon in the past two years, as well as 16 arrests for public urination, 11 vandalism complaints and 28 theft reports.

Two Fridays ago, police tried to help security guards at the bar prevent a drunk man from harassing a female patron. A scuffle ensued that spilled out into the parking lot, Hoffman said.

“The thing turned into a flat-out donnybrook,” he said. “We ended up arresting one guy for interfering with an arrest, another for unlawful rescue for trying to get his friend out of police custody and another for battery.”

The bar is required by the Los Angeles Police Commission to have security guards stationed outside, and Hoffman said one guard reported seeing the three alleged troublemakers getting drunk in the parking lot before going in.

“What good is uniformed security if they observed guys drinking for one hour in the parking lot and didn’t do anything?” Hoffman asked.

City zoning officials also are clamping down, by seeking to change the business’ use permit so that the Red Onion would be prohibited from operating a nightclub on the premises, zoning inspector John Perica said.

And state ABC officials disclosed last week that, once again, they will seek sanctions against the establishment for violating its liquor license. This time, the agency has compiled a list of 55 alleged violations, 22 inside the premises and the rest outside--including serving drunks, some of whom have committed assaults with deadly weapons, said Jim Smith, the ABC’s district administrator in Van Nuys.

“If they are allowing these assaults and batteries to take place, they’re violating their license,” Smith said. “A license is a privilege, not a right.”

Twelve times in the past, the ABC has filed formal accusations for offenses that included employing a minor, selling to minors and drunks, giving away alcohol and allowing gambling. As a result, the bar was shut down once, in 1986 for 10 days, for selling to minors, Smith said.

In March, 1990, the ABC suspended the bar’s license for 10 days for serving a drunk customer, but Red Onion management appealed and that action is still pending. In six other cases, the company was allowed to pay fines totaling $8,500, while continuing to operate the lucrative operation. Although the company could not say how much it takes in from its Woodland Hills operation, the chain grosses as much as $60 million annually.

In 1991, the Police Commission stepped in and imposed 24 operating conditions on the restaurant, including a requirement that it sell no more than one drink to a customer at a time and a limit on the size of the crowd. But those conditions are routinely ignored, according to authorities, who said they are tired of the continuing violations.

“We don’t plan on letting them pay a fine on this one,” said Smith. He said the ABC will soon seek to have the bar’s license revoked, but would allow the bar to continue operating under a threat of permanent revocation.

Smith said he expects Red Onion officials to drag the process out for several years by appealing any penalties to an administrative law judge.

“In the past,” he said, “Red Onion has always taken us to the wall on these.”

As a result, city and state officials say they will continue to try to work with Red Onion management to address the alleged problems.

Meanwhile, some Red Onion customers, like the bar’s owners, say the bar is being persecuted for problems that pale by comparison to those in other San Fernando Valley nightspots. Others say they now leave early before things get too rowdy.

As Flores and her friends continued to work on their Sex on the Beach drink one night last week, things began heating up. Strobe lights flashed around them at the bar, and the music was pumping. Clusters of college students and young executives shared laughs and rounds of drinks at nearby tables, and some headed for the dance floor.

“They can’t close this place down,” lamented Flores’ friend, Betty Sanchez, 23. “Where else are we going to go?”

One regular, Kari Kjontvedt, said: “The rowdiest it’s ever been is when you get pushed off the dance floor” by the other dancers.

Another, Marja Lewthwaite, 21, said the bar is always packed, but that the bartenders are good about cutting off people who have had one too many. And Mike Steen, 46, and his seven friends said they come once a month after work and have never seen any problems.

“It’s just regular old folks,” he said.

But others, like Carmen Pinard, 25, say they are coming less and less to the Red Onion because of problems.

“The violence has increased in here,” said Pinard, sitting with friends from work. “The last couple of times we’ve come here there’s been a fight, and a racial slur or two. It used to be a great place to go dancing late at night. We don’t do that anymore, knowing what happens. We don’t feel safe.”

Times staff writer Vicki Torres contributed to this report.