You may have already heard about this from local bartender/restaurant owner who was doing cartwheels and high-fiving strangers on the street, but the embattled former regional manager of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, Jason Evers, is sitting in the Ada County, Idaho, jail right now.
According to a deputy at the jail this afternoon, Evers was arrested on Tuesday, April 27. She couldn’t, however, give any more information about his arrest other than confirming that he is “on a U.S. Marshal hold.” This means that whatever he’s been arrested for came from the Feds.
For those not hip to this story, Evers was a former bartender who became an OLCC investigator and eventually was named the regional manager of an expansive region that includes Bend. After a firestorm of complaints from local restaurant and bar owners who thought Evers was unfairly targeting them, Evers was relocated to Medford. An Oregon Department of Justice investigation soon followed and found that Evers had indeed been overzealous in his enforcement tactics.
This didn’t knock him out of the OLCC, but he ended up transferring to the small town of Nyssa, Oregon, which is on the Idaho border (which explains why he’s in the Ada County jail). It’s still unclear why Evers was arrested and even more intriguing is the fact that whatever he’s being held on suspicion of appears to be some sort of federal violation.
There’s still plenty of mystery involved with this story, but at least you now know why that bartender of yours is in such a good mood today.
