Rob Nixon is mad — and he's not going to take it anymore.

The co-owner of Jackalope Jacks, an Elizabeth-area restaurant that has been in operation for 16 years, said Friday night showed him a side of the city that he never expected to see: the Gestapo side; that was when eight police officers and a code enforcement inspector walked into the restaurant and began taking photographs and then deemed that he was in code violation because Jackalope Jacks has karaoke machines and skee ball tables. Angry, Nixon fired off this note to his friends and followers on Facebook and sent copies to the mayor, the governor's office and the entire City Council:

Re-edited version for our Mayor and City Manager and Doug Fowler "the Code-anoter" by Jackalope Jacks on Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 1:31pm

CHARLOTTE AND ITS NEW FOUND NAZI HABITS!

I thought I wanted to live here for a long time,

I thought I wanted friends and fellow small business owners to move to charlotte,

I thought this was a city that wanted to grow relationships with small business owners,

I thought I did'nt mind helping the city out by not complaining about tax increases, or building basketball stadiums for billionaires, or bringing in baseball when nobody voted on it.

I thought I did not mind being a major money maker for the city with my tax contributions.

I thought I should respect elected officials and people they have hired to run this city.

Well, I thought wrong. More and more I want to do less to help this seemingly almost fascist state run city which seems determined to help destroy great small businesses.

Last night at about 11 o'clock a city representative Mark Fowler, came into Jackalope Jacks Restaurant with about 7-9 police officers. Mr. Fowler is a code enforcement superivsor,

who usually only works days, but took it upon himself to come to Jackalopes with police protection, to view for himself the highly illegal activity of skeeballing and Karaoke.

I was unaware of the prohibition of these two activities.

Apparently he could not come in, in a professional manner, during the day and ask politely to see these skeeball machines or the Karaoke system and inform us of their apparently 'highly illlegal' nature. Instead he chose to barge in at 11p.m, on what he surely knows is one of the busiest nights with a full police escort, which I am assuming costs the city about $500 dollars per hour to ensure his safety from us evildoers! He then began taking pictures of various areas of the restaurant ,without announcing himself to any of my management I might add, presumably to provide proof of these 'awful crimes'. When approached to ask exactly what he was doing, he very arrogantly stated that he would be sending me a violation because we were entertaining customers with those two activities. Also mentioning ,very unprofessionally, something about a totally unrelated minor building code issue. Is this perhaps some sort of vendetta for Mr Fowler as he seems to be taken a little personally. Who knows? Regardless, is 11p.m on a Friday night an appropriate vehicle for imparting this earth shattering information. From a strictly human being standpoint I would think not. Once again, perhaps between 9a.m and 5p.m Monday thru Friday would work better. During this very pleasant conversation, on my part, one of the police officers told me it would not be appropriate to talk to Mr Fowler at this point as I had had a few drinks even though I was nothing but polite. I was unaware that a citizen and business owner was not allowed to ask city officials relevant questions in reference to supposed violations. Perhaps if our city paid official had bothered to come at a reasonable hour I might not have had any drinks and would have been allowed to talk, as is my constitutional right I believe, to this person. Obviously the effect on the custom of the restaurant cannot even be determined. These kind of Gestapo tactics can only hurt as at the very least the appearance of so many police officers can only make people assume that we are some sort of arch criminals! This kind of behaviour is absolutely unconscionable. This action is infringing on my ability to do business not only now but in the forseeable future.

Introduce yourself, take some pictures and explain nicely what we may have been doing wrong. Is this an unreasonable request!!! 8 policemen!!!! Really? Is Al Capone in town and resurrected?

It looked like a major drug bust, SHAME ON THE CITY. Are there not more important things that police officers should be doing. Instead of running escort for Mark Fowler "The Code-inater".

As far as I know in 16 years of business, I have had only one ALE warning, for a mislabeled bottle, and only one noise violation in the last 8 years, when a very nice policeman came and asked us to turn it down, and we as always complied. Yet we ,and our friends "The Philosopher,s Stone , seem to have been singled out for persecution above other places running similar operations both nearby and throughout the city. Even our other nearest neighbours seem to have somehow escaped a visit from the entertainment swat team. I am not sure why? And would love to know.

We checked out the licensing info on the charlotte.gov website and could find nothing that states anything about Karaoke, which is free, and we don't charge at the door. Even so if this does exist perhaps a more moderate informative approach would have been more helpful and acceptable to all involved.

We have a privilege business license, that we thought covers everything as far as games are concerned. If this is not the case, once again, perhaps a pleasant phone call, e-mail or visit would have sufficed.

Restaurants are in the entertainment business, its our job to put people in the seat and keep them there. If I am in violation, then so are at least 400 hundred other bars/restaurants running Karaoke , trivia games, comedy nights, and of course the dreaded outside music.

So I assume the CITY of Charlotte expects its residents only function is to come in, eat in silence, and get the hell out. What a vibrant community!

Mr Fowler will undoubtedly be visiting every establishment in this city with his personal police force to take pictures of all the Karaoke rooms and all the machines and all of the pooltables before he sends me my violation.

If my skeeball machines are in violation then so must be all pool tables, foosball, Golden tee, Bowling games, Coin-operated machines, which by the way are tax-revenue, are in violation all over the city!

We generate great tax dollars for the city and state, employee 30 people, actively work with charities, and volunteer at the homeless mens shelter.

I personnaly purchased the last K-9 dog for the city, his name is Jax, and he work's with Officer Matt Yoeder. He's a great dog, I thought about donating the next dog to the city as well, because I believed in my community.I cannot express to you strongly enough my dissappointment with the totally unnacceptable way in which this occurred and my dissillusionment with the city's attitude toward small business.

I'm starting to hate my community and find that I don't want to be partners with people who seem to have no concern about my rights ,not only as a business owner, but as a citizen of the United States of America.

I would certainly appreciate your swift response to this matter as an indicator that you are at least interested in addressing our concerns.

Nixon spoke with Creative Loafing Monday afternoon, describing how this is the latest in what he deems as the city "slowly killing our business."

"This is not fun anymore," he said. "(Friday night) I lost 40 customers immediately when they came in. It looked like a drug bust or someone was killed in your restaurant. At what point did I lose the city as my partner?"

Restaurants in Charlotte, especially in NoDa and Elizabeth, have been gearing up to fight changes to the city's noise ordinance.

The city couldn't be reached by press time for comment; we hope to get their reaction tomorrow.

**UPDATE** Walter Abernathy, director of code enforcement for the city of Charlotte, spoke with Creative Loafing today and said Friday night's inspection of Jackalope Jacks was part of a citywide restaurant inspection by the Nuisance Response Team, which is the police, alcohol law enforcement officers and city inspectors working together to respond to complaints about clubs and restaurants.

"Over a period of time, this group has been identifying issues, and we've gotten complaints about restaurant locations that are late at night more like nightclub and bar locations than restaurants. We started looking at these about a year ago ... and they are late at night. The reason is, the behavior doesn't take place until late at night," Abernathy said.

The problem with a restaurant becoming a nightclub, said Abernathy, is the zoning rules. In Charlotte, clubs have to be 400 feet away from residences and restaurants don't have that stipulation. But if restaurants begin to play music, cut off food service and things of that nature, they're in violation.

And though Abernathy said there have been complaints about Jackalope Jacks, they aren't just targeting that one restaurant. "We've been all across the city for the last year and a quarter doing this operation. This is nothing new; it is something the city has been involved in for quite a while."

Abernathy said the city would love to sit down with the owners of the businesses. "It's not one thing that causes [an inspection]. It's OK  to have pool tables in your restaurant — but is it OK to have 14? It maybe OK to do karaoke in a restaurant, but at the same time, are you serving food? When do you break the threshold? And that's the determination, that our code enforcers make."

"Over a period of time, this group has been identifying issues, and we've gotten complaints about restaurant locations that are late at night more like nightclub and bar locations than restaurants. We started looking at these about a year ago ... and they are late at night. The reason is, the behavior doesn't take place until late at night," Abernathy said.

The problem with a restaurant becoming a nightclub, said Abernathy, is the zoning rules. In Charlotte, clubs have to be 400 feet away from residences and restaurants don't have that stipulation. But if restaurants begin to play music, cut off food service and things of that nature, they're in violation.

And though Abernathy said there have been complaints about Jackalope Jacks, they aren't just targeting that one restaurant. "We've been all across the city for the last year and a quarter doing this operation. This is nothing new; it is something the city has been involved in for quite a while."

Abernathy said the city would love to sit down with the owners of the businesses. "It's not one thing that causes [an inspection]. It's OK  to have pool tables in your restaurant — but is it OK to have 14? It maybe OK to do karaoke in a restaurant, but at the same time, are you serving food? When do you break the threshold? And that's the determination, that our code enforcers make."