Did Pierce County city’s midnight alcohol ban work? Here’s what crime stats say
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Ruston restricted alcohol sales after midnight; 911 calls to bars fell nearly half.
- Only one of 13 police reports cited intoxication; LCB closed seven complaints.
- Bar owners say council made restriction permanent without citing data.
In November the Ruston City Council voted 4-1 to make its controversial temporary ban on alcohol sales after midnight permanent, saying it was necessary to curb “increased incidents” of public intoxication, disruptions of the peace, fighting and driving under the influence.
Did the restriction work?
Police reports requested by The News Tribune show that 911 calls to bars in Ruston were down since the ban was implemented, and only one of 13 police reports mentioned alcohol intoxication. All seven complaints made to the state Liquor and Cannabis Board in 2025 were closed, meaning the investigations have concluded. There was one case where a 20-year-old was served alcohol after using a fake ID.
As previously reported by The News Tribune, there are four bars in Ruston that were usually open past midnight: The Unicorn Sports Bar, Coles Bar & Grill, North End on Pearl and the Silver Cloud Hotel Tacoma at Point Ruston. Of the 13 calls made to 911 near those locations, eight were reported near the Silver Cloud Hotel, four were reported near North End on Pearl and one was reported at the Unicorn Sports Bar. The News Tribune requested reports from Dec. 3, 2024 to Nov. 4, 2025, the day the temporary ban was passed to the day the City Council voted to make it permanent.
The Ruston City Council had encouraged the public to document more complaints this year with the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board and Ruston police because council members didn’t think the 25 incidents documented in 2024 were representative of the scale of the issue. According to public records received by The News Tribune, five of those 2024 incidents involved alcohol intoxication.
Council members did not cite specific data or complaints before making the sales restrictions permanent on Nov. 4., as previously reported by The News Tribune. Instead, staff said they looked at the receipts of three unnamed Ruston businesses that sold alcohol and surmised “the City has enjoyed improved quality of life without the loss of significant revenue from late-night liquor sales,” despite two businesses refuting that claim.
Business and bar owners in the community have been outspoken about Ruston’s liquor ban, claiming it would harm small business and that there is limited data to support the restriction. The owner and employees at the Unicorn Sports Bar have alleged the city targeted their business with the ordinance based on the grievances of a few neighbors.
What did police, liquor board reports show?
According to the records reviewed by The News Tribune, the only alcohol-related incident in Ruston was documented with police around 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve 2024 when a Federal Way man passed out in the bathroom of the Unicorn Sports Bar after drinking too much with his friends before arriving at the bar. According to the police report, the man’s girlfriend slapped him to wake him up, and the Unicorn’s bouncer called police after the man went unconscious.
The Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board received a sale to an intoxicated person/over-service complaint about the incident, which was closed and found to be unsubstantiated, according to records received by The News Tribune on Dec. 29.
Police reports at the Silver Cloud Hotel included a suspicious-persons report, a domestic-violence report, a report of a man who bit employees who tried to detain him during a likely mental health crisis, a scratched rental car report, a served personal protection order, a report of an unwanted guest in a mental health crisis, a report of a man who took the wrong car given to him by the valet and a driver arrested for avoiding a warrant.
At or near the North End on Pearl there were reports of a Federal Way man trespassed from the bar for groping and assaulting patrons, two reports of men arrested for driving with a suspended license and another report of a Tacoma woman calling to say she hit an unoccupied car while leaving the North End on Pearl the night before.
The total number of 911 reports to Ruston Police from Ruston bars was nearly half of the 25 reports filed last year.
When the city of Ruston was considering the midnight liquor-sale ban, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board told The News Tribune it didn’t consider the city a problem area for its enforcement team. Only one complaint was received for over-service at the Silver Cloud Hotel in 2024.
From Dec. 3, 2024 to Nov. 4, 2025, the LCB received seven total complaints about the Unicorn Sports Bar from three individuals. There were complaints that the Unicorn over-served patrons on Jan. 1, July 20, July 24 and in September. One person made four complaints of over-service in September, according to the LCB.
Of those complaints, all were closed by officers. During a check of the premises on Jan. 31, officers found a 20-year-old who had been served alcohol with a fake ID that wasn’t flagged by the bouncer’s ID-scanning machine. The woman was not observed to be intoxicated, and the Unicorn received a written warning. The woman also received a criminal citation for frequenting an age-restricted area and being a minor in possession of alcohol.
No other violations (including for over-service or sale to minors) were observed at the Unicorn during eight other checks of the premises in 2025, according to LCB investigation records. Staff, including the owner, bartenders and bouncers, received education about over-service, youth access to liquor and employee/patron conduct each time.
When asked about the complaints on Dec. 30, the Unicorn owner’s son, Trevor Barker, said all that information seemed accurate and “pretty much verified the suspicions of me and my mother, which is that [the city of Ruston] really doesn’t have much to go on” to justify the liquor ban. He also was concerned about how the restrictions would impact business on New Year’s Eve.
New councilor wants more city transparency
Only one of the five city councilors responded to multiple requests for comment from The News Tribune in response to the results of the police and liquor board reports. The Ruston Police Department and mayor Bruce Hopkins also did not respond to requests for comment.
In a phone interview Dec. 1, council member Jenn Jensen said she didn’t like the phrase “liquor ban” because, “We restricted sales to midnight, we did not ban liquor in the city of Ruston. We said you have to stop serving two hours earlier, and you have to close one hour earlier … that’s a distinction that has been left out.”
Jensen said as a predominantly residential community, businesses and residents “got to coexist.” When asked if it was fair to draw any conclusions about the impact of the liquor restriction based on the police and LCB reports, Jensen said the small data size makes it hard to know for sure.
“Having said that, calls have gone down and that’s positive. That’s a great thing, whether or not there’s a direct correlation,” she said. “I do know that residents are happier, mostly, and they did expect us to uphold the sales restriction, so it’s responsive to the people who live in this city.”
Naomi Wilson will be joining the Ruston City Council in January as its first Asian-American council member after she won the Position 4 race by four votes in November. Over coffee in late November, Wilson told The News Tribune she decided to run for office because she was disappointed that Ruston passed the liquor ordinance.
Wilson said she did extensive door-knocking in her campaign and thought that if the sales restriction was proposed to residents for a vote “the majority would say no and would support our small businesses.”
One of the main reasons she ran for office was to improve communications between the city and residents, the press, as well as other elected officials, Wilson said. Moving forward, Wilson said, she would support looking at the viability of recording or live-streaming council meetings to improve transparency and keep more residents in the loop about local issues.
“In [numerous director roles] at the Health Department, and even currently in my role [as Chief Transformation Officer] at Child Care Aware of Washington, I interact with a lot of elected officials — city administrators, people who are making policy decisions — and all of them were telling me the same story, which is, we reach out to Ruston and I hear nothing,” Wilson said. “I think that [the public] has lost confidence in the Council, which is another reason why I ran.”
