Fresno Handcuffed a 73-Year-Old Waiting for Mother’s Day Waffles After the Owner Reopened Against the City Order

FRESNO, CALIFORNIA — Mother’s Day breakfast is supposed to be eggs and a check. On May 10, 2020, it was a line of people on Figarden Drive, a code enforcement officer with a citation book, and a Fresno Police officer who put handcuffs on a 73-year-old man who had come for waffles with his wife.

The Waffle Shop’s owner, Ammar Ibrahim, had already decided the city’s indoor-dining ban was a death sentence for a breakfast counter. He told KMPH he had lost well over $500,000 in two months of closure and that reopening was a matter of “principles and rights.” He had walked a Freedom Rally outside City Hall and then unlocked the dining room. Customers stood six feet apart. Staff wore masks. None of that stopped the city from treating the room as a crime scene.

Jim Fisher filmed the shove-through and posted it with three words: “Disgraceful on Mother’s Day.” Nate Miller filmed his father, Tom Miller Sr., being walked to a patrol car in cuffs. Tom later showed the grooves the metal left on his wrists. Fresno Police would spend the next 48 hours drawing a lawyer’s distinction the public did not care about: Miller was detained for obstructing an officer, not booked, and released without charges. The video did not show a booking. It showed a grandfather in bracelets because he would not step aside so an officer could serve a restaurant owner.

Ibrahim had already taken a $1,000 citation on Friday. Customers in line paid it in cash before the officer finished writing — one woman handed over a thousand dollars, others peeled off twenties, $1,200 on the spot. The city warned the next day would be $5,000 and Mother’s Day could hit $10,000. Water to the building went off after the first fine. The city denied cutting it. Ibrahim kept the griddle hot.

Councilmember Garry Bredefeld ate there and then stood in front of the building on Monday with a six-point reopening plan and a demand that Mayor Lee Brand lift the shelter order. Hours later Police Chief Andy Hall dumped the body-camera file. Hall said the officer looked lawful on the tape and that Miller had refused repeated orders to move. Hall also admitted he had told his department to seek voluntary compliance and to make no lockdown arrests without his approval through the chain of command. That approval had not come. He opened an Internal Affairs file and pulled officers off future code-enforcement rides.

Ibrahim appealed the stack of tickets. In January 2021 a hearing officer named Flores issued a 26-page ruling that cited a 116-year-old Supreme Court case and kept roughly $6,000 in penalties. Two code officers testified they saw indoor dining on May 7, 8, and 10. Ibrahim admitted those dates. Flores found the fines were not excessive and that indoor dining carried a documented risk. Ibrahim’s answer was to stay open through Governor Gavin Newsom’s December 2020 stay-at-home order and collect more paper. “It’s been worth all the fines,” he said. “Nine months later, I’m still afloat and I’m still in business. If I closed my doors, I would have lost everything.”

The original Waffle Shop on Figarden Drive later sold and closed in 2023. Ibrahim had already opened Daddy Waffles at Herndon and Marks. The building changed hands. The argument did not. California spent the rest of that year lurching between patio rules, regional shutdowns, and district attorneys who refused to file criminal cases the state’s ABC inspectors wanted. Fresno County DA Lisa Smittcamp declined charges against four other restaurants cited that summer, calling the evidence thin and the administrative path enough. Ibrahim never got that courtesy on the civil tickets. He got a hearing officer and a bill.

What the Mother’s Day tape actually recorded was the moment a public-health order stopped being a poster in a window and became steel on an old man’s wrists. The city called it obstruction. The family called it breakfast. Both descriptions are on the same body camera. Related reporting from The AEGIS Alliance covers the CARES Act bailout, an Ohio woman tasered over a mask at a football game, and the Anonymous and The AEGIS Alliance News desk. More under U.S. News, Politics, and Police Accountability.