AND WHAT WILL THE NEIGHBOURS THINK?

FIRST, UNCARING retirement homes. Next, dirty restaurants. And now,
after-hours clubs. The considerable weight of the megacity is being
unleashed on business operators who show little regard for human decency,
public health and human life.

"Toronto will not tolerate illegal after-hour clubs and raves," Mayor Mel
Lastman said at a news conference at police headquarters yesterday.
"Starting right now, we will do everything in our power to shut them down."

As Lastman started winding into his delivery yesterday, flanked by police
Chief Julian Fantino, Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations Bob
Runciman and Solicitor-General David Tsubouchi, a reporter leaned over and
whispered:

"I can smell a knee-jerk reaction coming."

A news conference is often the last place to get a feel of the public's
pulse on an issue. Some official, government or other, is often trying to
get a message out, and a cynical and critical press tries its best to rain
on the parade.

Is the proposed crackdown a response that's out of all proportion to the
problem of rave parties, illegal booze cans, after-hours clubs and the
general proliferation of party places, often in unlicensed, inadequate
facilities?

What do most of us know? We never set foot in them and likely never will.
Yet, increasingly, we read about them in the morning Star.

Two bouncers have been killed at illegal parties since Feb. 14. Police
report several hospitalizations from suspected overdoses of the so-called
designer drug Ecstasy.

Since 1991 there have been "49 murders and many woundings" at after-hours
clubs, Fantino said. "Enough is enough."

City council - catching up to the spread of the mass gatherings that
feature pulsating music, wide availability and use of drugs and partying
into the wee hours, often at a huge venue - drafted a protocol last
December aimed at making the legal events safe, not shutting them down.

The illegal ones, sometimes held in premises designed for a restaurant, are
another matter.

Both seem plagued by the increasing presence of guns, the open sale and
consumption of drugs, and too little regard for the neighbourhood.

Yesterday's news conference announced plans aimed at the illegal joints.

First, the police "strike force" will set a strategy to identify the
location of such illegal events and, with the help of other city officials
from the fire, inspections, building and health departments, use any
violation as a pretext for closing.

For example, Lastman said, if the fire department arrives at a club and the
door is locked so firefighters can't inspect the party, but they believe
that fire safety rules are being contravened, firefighters can knock down
the door and then close up the joint.

They will have police backup, Fantino said.

And if there is a violation of licensing rules, health laws, building
codes, fire safety or any other city or provincial statute, the appropriate
official will take action, Fantino, Lastman et al promised.

Reporters asked the name of the strike force, how effective the crackdown
would be, why the urgency . . . Who? When? Where? Why?

One suspects that those are not the questions being asked by the frustrated
residents who live near the illegal clubs, the ones who have had to endure
the hell and chaos of hundreds of drug-crazed people openly flouting the
law, with the aid of entrepreneurs who themselves disobey city bylaws.

The only question they and most citizens have is: "What took them so long?"