By: Vickie J. Rubinson
According to The Wall Street Journal, no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain's namesake mouse perform.
Chuck E. Cheese's bills itself as a place "where a kid can be a kid." But to law-enforcement officials across the country, it has a more particular distinction: the scene of a surprising amount of disorderly conduct and battery among grown-ups.
"The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles," says Town of Brookfield Police Capt. Tim Imler. "There's a biker bar down the street and we rarely get calls there."
The environment also brings out what security experts call the "mama-bear instinct." A Chuck E. Cheese's can take on some of the dynamics of the animal kingdom, where beasts rush to protect their young when they sense a threat. Amid pressure from local politicians, some Chuck E. Cheese's have stopped serving alchohol and added security guards who carry pistols.
The first Chuck E Cheese's was opened in San Jose, Calif in 1977 by Nolan Bushnell, founder of the Atari videogame company. He thought there weren't enough places where young people could play games in a family atmosphere. To appeal to adults, about 70% of the chain's locations serve beer and wine. Some city officials have pinpointed that as the main cause of the fighting.
"It was like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film," says once source, referring to the "Pulp Fiction" director. "What parent is going to take their kids to a place where there is alchohol and pistols being brandished?"
According to The Wall Street Journal, no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese's in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child's birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant's music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain's namesake mouse perform.
Chuck E. Cheese's bills itself as a place "where a kid can be a kid." But to law-enforcement officials across the country, it has a more particular distinction: the scene of a surprising amount of disorderly conduct and battery among grown-ups.
"The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles," says Town of Brookfield Police Capt. Tim Imler. "There's a biker bar down the street and we rarely get calls there."
The environment also brings out what security experts call the "mama-bear instinct." A Chuck E. Cheese's can take on some of the dynamics of the animal kingdom, where beasts rush to protect their young when they sense a threat. Amid pressure from local politicians, some Chuck E. Cheese's have stopped serving alchohol and added security guards who carry pistols.
The first Chuck E Cheese's was opened in San Jose, Calif in 1977 by Nolan Bushnell, founder of the Atari videogame company. He thought there weren't enough places where young people could play games in a family atmosphere. To appeal to adults, about 70% of the chain's locations serve beer and wine. Some city officials have pinpointed that as the main cause of the fighting.
"It was like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film," says once source, referring to the "Pulp Fiction" director. "What parent is going to take their kids to a place where there is alchohol and pistols being brandished?"
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