Burnham, IL - Will’s Sports Bar is “bad for the community and dangerous for police officers,” after over 800 calls for police services there

Since it opened in June 2010, a 4 a.m. bar in Burnham owned by the wife of a former politician in neighboring Calumet City has drawn more than 800 police calls, prompting the police chief in the south suburb to call for it to be shut down.

Will’s Sports Bar is “bad for the community and dangerous for police officers,” according to the police chief, Peter Belos, who says he’d close it if he could.

“The crowd that it attracts, it gives us the problems,” says Belos, whose officers have been called to the bar owned by Kimberly Wilson more than 1,400 times in the past six years, including “building checks,” village records show.

Kimberly Wilson didn’t return calls. Her husband Brian Wilson — a former Calumet City alderman who helps manage the bar — calls Will’s the “most well-run bar in Burnham or Calumet City.”

But records show the Burnham police have been called to the club, which has a capacity of 252 people, for incidents that have included more than two dozen assaults, aggravated assaults and batteries, five calls about shots having been fired and numerous complaints about public indecency, noise and other disturbances. In March, a shooting outside the club led to a first-degree murder charge.

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