Brooklyn Bar Staff Fired for Turning Away Assault Victim

Crown Victoria Bar in Williamsburg. Image via Google Maps

Crown Victoria Bar, go-to outdoor drinking spot for much of Williamsburg’s west side, was brought to its knees over the weekend by Akilah Hughes — a local writer, comedian and YouTube star with a fiercely loyal social-media following.

“Three grown men” working at the bar ”watched a woman get assaulted,” Hughes wrote on Twitter Sunday afternoon, and ”wouldn’t get ice or call for help.”

Hughes then spread her anti-Crown Vic campaign to Tumblr, where she wrote a post called “WOMEN: DO NOT GO TO CROWN VICTORIA BAR IN WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN. NOT EVEN ONCE.”

The Tumblr post has since been shared over 31,000 times.

In response, the bar’s Facebook and Yelp pages were immediately inundated with angry comments and scathing reviews from Hughes’ fans and followers. (So much so, that its Yelp page has since been transitioned into “active cleanup” mode, in which Yelp moderators begin to remove posts “that appear to be motivated more by the news coverage itself than by the reviewer’s own customer experience with the business.”)

By Monday, the men involved had been fired for “wholly unacceptable behavior” in the aftermath of Hughes’ assault.

Here’s what happened on Halloween night outside Crown Vic, according to Hughes.

“I was at a different bar with friends. This guy came up to me and started touching my hair and getting in my face. I told him to leave me alone. His girlfriend got in my face and I told her to control her boy. Security came and escorted him out.

We left shortly after, me and three friends. We turned a corner and the guy and his girlfriend caught up to us. The guy then punched me in the face. One of my friends jumped in and fought him off — getting two black eyes in the process. This was in front of Crown Victoria. I grabbed my mace and sprayed it at the assailing couple and asked the security guards for help. They decided to mock me, and treat me and the bleeding man who saved my life like trash. All they had to do was get ice or call the cops. Apparently we didn’t merit helping.

I’m going to destroy their business. And I don’t give a f***.”

And here are a couple cellphone videos that Hughes shot of the encounter, although they’re kind of hard to make out.

The footage was apparently damning enough — or the online shaming bloody enough — for Crown Vic’s top brass to terminate the men who wronged Akilah Hughes.

The bar posted the following statement to its website Monday.

“Having taken the time to review all camera footage and speak to all members of staff present, we want to address the incident that took place on the sidewalk near Crown Victoria on November 1st around 1.30am. While we are unable to see the incident on our security camera footage as it did not occur on our premises, it is clear that the behavior of members of our staff in the aftermath was wholly unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Therefore, the security staff and the manager in question have been terminated.

We would like to point out that two of our three managers and five of our six bartenders are female, and that this behavior is not representative of the actions of our staff as a whole. Earlier this morning, we reached out to Akilah and we look forward to speaking with her to offer our sincere apologies.”

Hughes wrote on Twitter that she talked to a guy named Rich from Crown Vic Bar on Monday night. “He was incredibly apologetic,” she wrote.

Crown Vic management did not respond to Patch’s request for comment.