Danbury Mayor Reacts to Woman Accused of Selling Booze From Apartment

On Thursday (11/10/20) we learned a Danbury woman was arrested on Friday (11/6/20) for allegedly selling alcohol and cigarettes from her apartment. Police say 65-year-old Vera Lucia Ribeiro-Menezes has been arrested five times over the last two years for similar charges.

We asked Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton to share his thoughts on the arrest when he joined the Ethan and Lou Show on Thursday (11/12/20). I kicked off the subject by joking that I am all for this and think it's a perfect way for people with four dollars in their pocket to enjoy a drink and a smoke.

The Mayor had this to say:

"Isn't this just the entrepreneurial spirit, really in action here? No, listen come on, if you can't afford a full pack of cigarettes you can only afford a single cigarette, you shouldn't be buying cigarettes at all because you probably can't afford rent, you can't afford food and everything else. So, this is part of a problem we have in this society but yes this is a bootlegger, this is what we called a person like that when we were kids and we would go there and get booze and whatever and you know they would serve underage people."

He continued on to say, "She's got a little bit more of a different bent on the business where, like you say, she's selling singles and nip bottles and things like that. You know five times, eventually she's going to get thrown in jail and this may be the time she gets thrown in jail. Certainly anything that she has in the apartment or at the house will be confiscated which is great because we will take that and use it for drug enforcement, education, things like that, important things." See, at least good things can come out of this.

He finished off by saying, "and, it's just not a good thing to do and she's got all kinds of tax implications because the State of Connecticut will be swooping in and go hey, you know you sold $60,000 worth of stuff, where are taxes on that?"

I interrupted to mention that the Mayor's argument now sounded "a lot more solid than mine".

Next I asked what would happen to all of the reported cash and merchandise police say they confiscated and that is when the jokes started flying around the room. For instance, did you know the Mayor was smoking two cigarettes at a time yesterday?  Check out what a good time we had in the video below. (The joking starts at the 2:00 mark).