Yawkey Way Bar Agrees To Increase Security After Fatal Thanksgiving Shooting

Boston's Licensing Board is considering a plan worked out between a Yawkey Way bar and Boston police to increase security after a fatal shooting outside the bar last month.

The owner of Who's On First has agreed to install ID scanners that will keep track of all customers, as well as outside cameras and metal detectors. It already conducts pat-down searches.

"It's a step in the right direction," Boston Police Supt. Bernard O'Rourke said of the new security measures.

Twenty-nine-year-old Jephthe Chery, an off-duty MBTA conductor, was shot and killed outside Who's On First early Thanksgiving morning. Three other people were wounded in the shooting.

Police say video shows the alleged shooter leaving the bar shortly before the shooting.

"The question they keep asking themselves over and over every day is: 'What could we have done different that would have prevented that?'" Jack Diamond, an attorney for the bar's owner, told the Licensing Board at a hearing Friday. "Short of not opening that night, there's nothing they could have done that prevented anything. It was an uneventful, fun night inside the establishment."

"It's not the club" said Pauline Barnes, a friend of the Chery family. "It happened outside the club, as people were leaving."

The Licensing Board is expected to vote on the plan next week.